


Breathing Room

by fallenxstarr



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: 7th year fic, AU, M/M, quarantine au, quarantine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:00:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23438839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallenxstarr/pseuds/fallenxstarr
Summary: When a magickal virus infiltrates the school and it become clear just how dangerous it is, there's no choice but to close Watford and keep every student confined to their rooms. No classes may sound like good news, but being trapped with your roommate far outweighs the good- especially if your roommate is a vampire who's made it clear he wants to kill you. Especially if your roommate is the one person you want, a hero who you'd let kill you.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 60
Kudos: 221





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for everyone on tumblr who encouraged me to write this and "bothered" me into staying motivated!  
> 
> 
> [If you're interested in the playlist I made for the fic.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5TDizQBZs4jx8TOkTKagj8?si=5VwvS0GNS6i7s9QbxAlOJw)  
> [If you're interested in the song I wrote for this fic.](https://canwriteitbetterthanueverfeltit.tumblr.com/post/614048127169789952/i-am-such-an-absolute-mess-that-instead-of-writing)

Penny was making the face that meant “you’re going to make something explode” which, to be fair, was usually correct when she made it. Simon let out a breath, deciding to give **On your feet** a rest. It shouldn’t have been a hard spell, and he could usually at least get it to urge somebody into a standing position- it was the rise in energy that he was meant to be working on, something he’d never once gotten right- but today he was distracted enough that the magick didn’t do a thing. Well, not a thing it was supposed to do, he was pretty sure that the burnt rubber smell was from his wand work. Penelope clearly thought so.

“Is it Agatha?” Penny pushed, and he resisted rolling his eyes, just barely. Someone else would have asked gently, or, better, not at all, but Penny wasn’t the gentle type. She was more the interrogation type.

Simon shrugged noncommittally, and Penny frowned at him, looking a bit more like her mum than he was comfortable with.

“Yeah, I guess so,” He conceded.

“To be fair, Simon,” She said, ignoring the look on his face. “you do get hurt fairly often.”

“That’s not really the point, Penny.” The point, as Simon had tried to explain multiple times already, was how annoyed Agatha had seemed about it, as if he’d tampered with his own wand. Or as if he were the problem, not the wand. It wasn’t as if he were hoping she’d weep over his hospital bed.

“Mmm.” She sounded unconvinced.

“It’s just that Baz-”

He stopped when Penny rolled her eyes. They’d already been through this, the evidence versus not-really-evidence debate. And the Baz Debate in general, which was mostly Penny just telling him not to talk about Baz.

“It doesn’t matter,” He sat back until he was leaning against the wall of Mummer’s House. And then repeated, “It doesn’t matter” more forcefully because Penny still had the same disbelieving, judgmental expression on.

“If you say so, Simon. You clearly don’t want to talk to Agatha about it anyway. So, ignore each other.” It was probably meant to sound blasee, but coming from Penny it sounded more like an order. And at that, one that would lead to a repeat of a conversation Simon wasn’t excited to have.

Simon tried to think of something that would at least change the direction of Agatha’s rant, and latched on to, “How’s your mum?”

“Chuffed, honestly,” Penny answered. “She might charge in and drag me away from Watford at any moment. Says the Mage is going to spread the plague.”

“The plague?”

“Oh come on, Simon, I was talking about this earlier.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Nicks and Slick, I always lose out when I’m up against buttered scones.”

“Only in the morning,” Simon amended. “ _Everyone_ loses against buttered scones in the morning.”

“Well,” She said, in her giving-lessons voice. “there've been some cases of a magickal virus. Nobody really knows what it can do, just that it’s bad. And it may or may not be the next phase in Humdrum attacks.”

“But so far the Humdrum has only attacked  _me.”_

__

__

“So far,” She said. “but no one said that would stand forever. Dad’s pretty excited, actually. I mean, horrified and quite worried, just like most people, but definitely excited too. He’s been spending even more time in his office, if you can believe it. I’m pretty sure he’d put a bed up there if mum would let him.”

“Why haven’t I heard anything about this?” Simon frowned, and corrected himself when Penny shot him a look. “Other than from you.”

She nodded sympathetically, correctly interpreting his thoughts.

“Well, you know The Mage,” Penny said, and Simon tried not to shoot back _“Do I?”_. For the most part he could say he’d gotten over The Mage ignoring him the year before, but it still stung sometimes. Especially when it felt like he was hiding things from him. Again.

“Maybe he thinks it’s the families,” Simon suggested. The idea of The Humdrum attacking mages other than him made him feel uncomfortable. At least he’d always been good at being a target before.

“Infecting magick?” Her eyes were so wide Simon wondered if it hurt.

“I dunno.”

“Maybe he does,” Penny said after a moment, mulling it over. “Think it’s just the families making a fuss, and that’s why he hasn’t done anything. Maybe he thinks they’re making it up.”

“Maybe.” Simon shrugged. He didn’t feel much like talking theories. Or much like trying to get in The Mage’s head. “I dunno.”

“We could ask him.” Penny had a bit of a mad glint in her eye. “We could go find him.”

“That doesn’t sound...”

“Oh, why not? Go ask him what in Crowley’s name is going on. Mum would be pleased at least.”

A blur of black hair caught his eye. Never in his life had he been so relieved to see Baz Pitch. Not even with the chimera, since that was Baz’s fault anyway.

Simon stood up so fast he nearly lost his balance and fell into the building. Penny watched him warily, and he smiled at her.

“I’m sure it’s fine. If it weren’t, we’d know something.” He looked towards the door, which was now entirely Baz free. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Penny.”

“See you tomorrow, Simon.” She called after him, “And make sure to study for the elocution test!”

Mummer’s House, like Watford, made him feel relieved every time he entered it. At least, it did when he knew Baz wasn’t waiting to do something villainous. The thought made him temporarily worry about Baz doing something villainous _outside_ of Mummer’s House, but he pushed himself up the steps anyway. So far his resolution to follow Baz less- a resolution Penny reminded him of constantly- was going better than he’d thought it would. His resolution to worry less about Baz and his plots was significantly less impressive, but he figured that was probably for the best anyway. It would be harder for Baz to catch him off guard. Again.

He hesitated in front of his door, listening for any noises, before he opened it, and then hesitated again before he settled onto his bed. He still wasn’t sure how Baz was planning on getting back at him for the polecat. Though, to be fair, the polecat itself was Simon getting back at Baz. Still, these things didn’t tend to just end. And it was taking him longer to retaliate than usual- meaning he must have something big planned.

Once he’d showered and put on his pajamas, he fell asleep quickly, rousing only hours later, when the door opened. He kept his eyes closed, but listened close, to the sound of Baz moving around the room, sometimes a little too loudly for his regular frustratingly graceful self, obviously hoping to wake Simon. Simon fell back to sleep just to spite him.

***********************************************************************************************************************************

It was barely light out when Simon woke up, the bleary early sun just finding its way through the window. His stomach was already starting to growl, and he tried not to think about breakfast too hard. Instead, he pulled on his clothes as quickly as he could, not worrying much as he knocked into wardrobe and bed posts. Baz twitched on his bed, but didn’t get up. He focused so entirely on getting ready to run out the door that it was several minutes before he noticed anything was wrong.

The feeling in the air... His first thought was that The Humdrum was attacking, but there wasn’t any shouting, and it didn’t exactly feel like that anyway. When The Humdrum attacked the air felt itchy and dry and frantic. This was more like heavy. It didn’t feel frantic at all, more like it was... waiting. Searching.

He saw Baz sit up on the edge of his vision, and ignored him. He put his hand to his hip and started calling for his sword.

“Really, Snow?” Baz broke the silence. “Do you _always_ go for that sword? It’s a weapon not a security-”

Something else stopped Baz before Simon could. The Mage. Simon swung around, looking for him, before he realized the sound of him, clearing his throat, was just that- sound.

“It is my unfortunate duty,” His voice began. “to deliver the news that one of our own has been hospitalized.”

He could hear the echo of The Mage’s news somewhere else in the building, and realized The Mage must have been using a powerful spell to project into every single dorm room.

“3rd year Gemma Rhys fell ill on the grounds late last night-” Simon glared at Baz suspiciously, who ignored him. “and thus far her...” The Mage faltered, and Simon’s blood chilled. “her voice has yet to come back. The illness seems to be from an airborne virus, most likely created by the Humdrum, and while we’re researching it, I have to ask each and every one of you to do your best to avoid it, by staying in your rooms. Do _not_ get in contact with anyone except your roommate, and do _not_ leave the building for _any reason_. Food will be provided to you at the entrance of each of your buildings, please only pick it up when your room is told to, and limit yourselves to one person at a time. Stay safe, and, above all, keep your magic safe.”

The Mage’s voice died away, and Simon didn’t move. He’d been a foot from the door, and his hand was still reaching out towards it, stuck there like he'd been hit with a **Stand your ground**. Finally, he fell back, sitting on his bed.

Baz got up, grabbed clothes from his wardrobe, and shut the bathroom door behind him. Simon listened to the sound of running water, only slightly distracting him from his own worried thoughts. A magician losing her voice was a complete tragedy. And it only made him feel more suspicious of Baz.

He’d been out late last night, and was still the only person he knew who had taken someone’s voice. He’d almost taken _Simon’s_ voice. Simon tried not to think too much about it. Or about the fact that Philippa had lost her own, just because she’d gotten in the way. The familiar feeling of guilt squeezed him, and he did his best to shake free.

Well. The Mage had said it was the Humdrum. And Penny had balked at the idea of the families being involved. Though Merlin, if anyone could be heartless enough to infect magick just to get back at The Mage, it was The Pitches.

He was glaring at the bathroom door when it opened, and Baz paused, startled- or whatever the posh equivalent of startled was- then glared right back.

Simon didn’t look away, so Baz snarled and moved past him. Simon watched him sort through his desk and move back and forth between his things, trying to detect an ounce of something like guilt or villainy. He stared until Baz got back into bed, clearly ignoring him, and pulled out one of his notebooks. At least, Simon thought, the worst he could do was try to send a note. And a note wouldn’t get very far, if he had anything to do with it.

***********************************************************************************************************************************

Time was moving slower than it ever had in Simon’s life. He’d even considered trying out a **Time flies** , but abandoned the thought when he realized there wasn’t enough fun in the history of their room combined to trick the magick into working.

Simon’s stomach had been growling louder than a merwolf for the past 5 hours, and all he’d been able to do for it was pace the room, which did more for his brain than it did his gut. If only he’d still been keeping food on his desk, but he’d given up the practice a few months past. It drove Baz completely mad, and had caused at least one physical fight. He said it brought in pests- “and there are already enough _pests_ in our room, Snow”. For a while Simon had made sure to bring at least one piece of food back after tea or dinner, but he’d stopped after about a week, when he had to admit- though never out loud, and never to anyone but himself- that Baz had been right.

Now he would have happily filled the room with ants, flibbertygibbets, and shillins if it meant he had a single thing to eat.

His head shot up at the movement from across the room. Baz was standing in front of the window, which he’d just opened. Simon had closed it after the announcement, worrying over contamination, and thinking of Gemma, and of Philippa, and Baz had rolled his eyes from his place on the bed but said nothing to stop him.

Simon was on his feet almost without thinking. Baz turned back around toward him, looking effortlessly cool and bored. Simon held his fists at his sides, resisting the urge to hit the look off of his face. Sometimes it felt like the only time Baz _didn’t_ look cool, look effortless at all, was when he was pushed into actually attacking. But that wasn’t a good enough reason to get himself kicked out of Watford.

“Close the window.”

Baz sighed, like he was already tired of the conversation. “Oh, come on Snow.”

“Close it.”

“Crowley, Snow, do you think it _matters_?”

“Just close the window!” He shouted.

Baz raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I will, actually. It’s my room isn’t it. My wall.”

Simon scowled.

“Morgana knows it’s not going to do anything anyway,” Baz continued. “It’s not as if we can stop breathing. Well,” He gave Simon a look. “you could always try.”

Simon huffed. He was tempted to keep pushing it anyway, even as clear as it was that Baz wasn’t willing to back down, but something about the way Baz was looking at him made him stop. There was a glint of something sharp to him, something Simon might have called desperate if the rest of him was anything but relaxed and ready for a fight.

It only served to make Simon feel more suspicious.

A few moments later, a flash of light lit up the center of the room. Simon jumped up, already reaching for his sword, before he realized there was no danger. His mouth was open, staring at where the light had been, as he tried to figure out what it meant- did light flash before the virus invaded? Was hallucinating light a symptom of the virus? Was it a puzzle The Mage expected him to work out so he could pass him information?

“For magick’s sake, you’d think after 7 years you’d be less impressed with a basic spell.” He heard Baz drawl. “At least the food’s here, so you won’t die a slow death of starvation. Today.”

“The...” Simon caught on after a moment. He was about to defend himself, because they’d never said _how_ they were going to tell them to pick up their food, but interrupted himself when he saw Baz move towards the door. Something was still off with him, more than usual. It felt like he was hiding something. And Simon wasn’t about to let him out of the room to do Merlinknows what.

“I’ll go.”

Baz looked like he wanted to argue, but didn’t. “Fine.”

Simon looked at him, as if looking closely enough could reveal what he was up to, but Baz waved him away.

“I don’t _care_ , Snow. Food is food.”

Simon hesitated for another moment before finally pushing himself out of the room. Immediately, he felt himself relax. Even with Baz apparently ignoring him, it was impossible to relax with your sworn enemy across the room from you. It felt like he was taking the first real breath he’d taken all day, since the announcement at least.

He took the stairs as slowly as he could manage, trying to take in all the Baz-free-ness of the rest of the building. It felt good to be alone, and even better to know he was walking towards wonderful, warm Watford food.

There were two nearly toppling plates waiting for him, piled with everything he could have imagined. He wondered if they were made that way by a spell, or if Cook Pritchard had sent someone to hide behind the door and make up every plate in between students coming and going.

There was also butter and jam in tiny packets lining the table. Simon paused to shovel a handful of butter onto one of the plates before heading back up the stairs.

At first he moved at the same slow, leisurely pace he’d made his way down with, but then he thought about Baz alone, in the room. While the upside of being alone meant no Baz, the downside was that he couldn’t keep an eye on Baz, or stop him from doing whatever he wanted- whatever he might have spent all day planning. Simon took the steps by twos, considered trying to take them by threes, but was too afraid to drop anything off of the plates.

He threw the door open with his available hand, and heard it slam into the wall. Baz was sitting, a bit dumbstruck, on his own bed, doing nothing clearly out of the ordinary, and he stared at Simon as Simon glowered at him. He broke eye contact after a few long moments, dropping Baz’s food on his desk, and grabbing a few pieces of bread off his own before he dropped it on his bed.

He moved to the wardrobe, flinging the door open with all the force of someone expecting a flying monkey to burst out of it. He poked through each of his jackets and trousers until he was sure they hadn’t been tampered with, then dropped to his knees and checked under the bed. He could feel Baz’s eyes on him, but ignored them.

He got up and inspected the bathroom last, going far enough to even attempt a light to look into the sink drain. After he’d exhausted every possibility that he could think of, Simon finally gave up, stomach winning.

His eyes flicked up to Baz and another wave of wariness rushed over him. Baz’s plate was completely empty, save for a few crumbs. He hadn’t touched it the whole time Simon had been searching in the room, he must have done something when he went into the bathroom. But why? _What_ had he done to his food?

Hunger won out, and he had to leave the thought for later.

The rest of the day went about the same as the first half had gone. Slow, boring, and just off enough to drive Simon mad. He insisted on getting the food when the light came for dinner (and hadn’t even reached for his sword this time, just jumped a bit), and Baz had fought a little over it, but most likely more because they hadn’t fought in a while and Baz was an arsehole than for any real reason. Unless, of course, it was part of some plot. Either way, Simon felt more comfortable being the one to make the trip down. He was rewarded with scones and butter, set aside for the next morning’s breakfast, and he ran back as quickly as he could without jostling the three separate plates.

Now all there was to do was wonder how much they knew about the virus, and what The Mage was doing, and what Penny was doing and if her roommate was driving her up a wall yet (he was sure the answer was yes).

If only The Mage had allowed them to have cellphones he could at least have company that didn’t hate him. During the summer Penny found ways to talk to him, no matter the fact that The Mage didn’t want anyone to. Maybe she’d find a way to do it this time to.

Though, the problem with Penny and her problem solving was that she didn’t see a problem with a lot of solutions. Like the time she’d possessed an old man to speak through him. If that was the only way she could talk to him now, he might actually prefer not being able to talk at all.

The image of Penny’s voice coming out of Baz’s sour, posh face was bizarre enough that he laughed without meaning to. Baz’s head swiveled towards him, expression already defensive and ready for a fight.

“What?” Simon pressed, locking his jaw.

“What?” Baz echoed in a mocking voice.

Simon stood up, then grabbed his pajamas, and went into the bathroom. When he got out of the shower, Baz was pretending to be asleep. He could hear him breathing when the lights were off, too loudly, unevenly, to be anything but awake, and untrusting- just like Simon. They spent half the night that way, listening for a change in each other’s breathing.


	2. Chapter 2

Simon’s body woke him up too early again, trying its best to push him out of bed quarantine or not. He shoved his head under a pillow, and willed himself back to sleep. When he opened his eyes again, Baz was pacing between their beds. He watched him for a few seconds, before warily sitting up. 

Baz wasn’t the pacing type. He was the standing next to a wall, or leaning against a wall, if the situation really seemed to require it, type. He looked a bit unhinged, the glint of whatever it was Simon had seen in him from the day before clearer in his eyes. He looked dangerous, and uncontrolled. Less and less like the Baz he was used to, fights notwithstanding. 

Simon cleared his throat, feeling almost like he was invading, before realizing what a stupid thought that was. Baz spun around, and then immediately turned his back to him again. Simon watched him grab a sausage from the large breakfast plate, then sit himself on the bed, facing the wall. 

Simon stared for a few more seconds before cautiously standing up and making his way to the bathroom. He opened the door quickly, scanning the room, before closing the door behind him. He was more worried than ever about what it was Baz was up to. Maybe he really _was_ behind the virus. Or, at least, part of whoever was behind it. Whatever it was, it had to be big to have Baz that... rattled. 

Baz was still sitting on his bed when Simon came back into the room, no longer facing the wall. He scowled at the floor when Simon came out, not looking up at him. Simon clomped from wardrobe- swinging the door open first- to desk, to bed, before sitting down with an array of breakfast foods. Baz spent the entire time with his eyes locked on the floor. 

Simon stared at him, annoyed. He stared long enough that his eyes began to burn a little, and when he blinked a small tear escaped. He rubbed it with the back of one hand, the one not holding a sour cherry scone, and Baz looked for a moment as if he were going to meet his eyes, but he only shifted, slightly, away. 

Simon ate his meal noisily, and without breaking eye contact with Baz’s widow’s peak. Baz acted as if he didn’t notice. 

Most of the day passed like that- Simon staring, Baz refusing to even acknowledge that Simon was in the room, beside a curl to his lip- until Simon could hardly stand it. 

“I _know_ ,” He announced, but it was as if he had announced it to an empty room for all the reaction he got from Baz. He stood up, and took a few steps until he was a foot away from the other boy. That, at least, made Baz raise his shoulders, taking in a deep breath. “I said, I _know_.” 

“Know _what_ , Snow,” Baz finally asked, still not looking at him. 

“I know what you’re plotting,” Simon told him, leaning in slightly just to see if Baz would move. “I know you did something. I know you’re _doing_ something. I-” 

“You-” Baz cut him off, raising his eyes, finally, finally, to Simon’s. The intensity of his gaze made Simon take a step back without meaning to. “don’t know _anything_ .” 

“I- You don’t- I _know_ \- Don’t-” Simon blustered. 

“Just go get dinner, Snow,” Baz laid back, eyes now on the ceiling. “You’ll feel better.” 

Simon tried to argue, but his mind was nothing but irritation and, unfortunately, hunger. He let the door slam shut when he left the room. 

***********************************************************************************************************************************

Simon woke up too early again, groaning silently. He kept his eyes closed, hoping he could fall directly back to sleep. He could hear the wind from the window, and something like birdsong. He thought, as he drifted back into his dream, that he could also hear Baz. 

Baz was staring at him when he woke up, standing directly in front of his bed, with a look in his eye that suddenly reminded Simon that he shared a room with a vampire. 

He jumped to his feet, hand going towards his hip. The sword was already in his hand when Baz started laughing, an unamused, exasperated sound. 

“Morgan’s Tooth, Snow, if I wanted to kill you in your sleep I would have done it six years ago. Put that thing away.” 

Simon relaxed slightly, but didn’t put the sword away. Baz wasn’t looking at him, which immediately made Simon frown, remembering the weirdness of the day before. He followed Baz’s gaze, landing on the small white note at the same time Baz raised a hand to it. 

Simon bounded towards it, grabbing it just before Baz did. 

“It’s-” 

“It’s from The Mage!” Simon exclaimed. 

“I _know_ , Snow,” Baz drawled. “That’s what I was trying-” 

Simon squinted at the still unopened note, then back up at Baz, who was studying the wall next to the window. “Where’s the bird?” 

“Did you want me to keep it?” Baz asked, raising an eyebrow at the curtain. “It flew back out the window.” 

Simon frowned at him before turning back to the note in his hand. 

_“Simon - I want to remind you that magick itself is dependent on you and your survival. I know you are most likely trying to find a way to help, but I must ask you not to. Stay inside, this is not something for you to fight._

_The Mage.”_

Simon stared at the note for a few seconds, then re-read it. It was so short (though he knew the notes couldn’t be too long), he felt a wave of disappointment as he scanned it for hidden information and couldn’t find anything. And, Simon thought slowly, it sounded as if The Mage thought he was about to throw himself out a window to get into the action. But, well, there _was_ no action, was there? Just research, and he’d never been the best at research, that was more Penny’s thing. But maybe there _was_ action to get into. Maybe The Mage hadn’t even told them the whole story, and Simon was supposed to have figured it out. He cursed at himself. The Mage _never_ told the whole truth, just in case the wrong people were listening. Like Baz. He side eyed the other boy. 

Should he have been trying to throw himself out the window? Or walk out the building? He was sitting in his room with his arse of a roommate doing nothing, when the world was waiting for him. The Humdrum was waiting for him. Was he the _worst_ hero- like Baz had always said? The worst Chosen One. 

“Insider information, Snow?” Baz said, startling Simon out of his thoughts. “I should have expected. Is he telling you how to beat it instead of sharing a cure?” 

“What?” Simon exclaimed. “What are you talking about?” 

“If he has any idea what’s going to stop it,” Baz said, like it was obvious. “he’s telling _you_ , right? Before anyone else in all magick. As long as his favorite soldier is fine, everything else comes second.” 

Simon scowled. Baz sneered. 

“What about _you_?” Simon shot back. 

“Me?” Baz looked surprised. “He doesn’t care about _me_ \- he’s probably hoping this thing will knock me out before he has to.” 

“I mean, what about _you_ ,” Simon said. “and your family! Who would you give it to? Would your family give you the cure? _Did_ they tell you the cure?” 

Baz raised his eyebrows, before doing the most frustrating thing- laughing. “Is that what he thinks? That _we_ did this? Aleister Crowley, we must be powerful.” 

“It isn’t funny!” 

“The idea of it is,” Baz said. “Apparently everything is the Families fault now, even illness. _No_ , Snow, we didn’t do this. And I don’t know anything about a cure. No matter what your precious Mage might think.” 

Simon didn’t try to explain that he had no idea at all what The Mage thought or didn’t think. 

“You’d love this to be our fault, I know,” Baz continued, lip curling. “so it wouldn’t be _his_.” 

“His!” Simon balked. “The Mage didn’t- would never-” 

“He didn’t do anything to stop it!” Baz yelled over him. “He knew, and he didn’t do a bloody thing. We told him, and he wouldn’t listen- if it’s not something to kill, he doesn’t care. If it doesn’t threaten him or his Chosen One, then the rest of us can deal with it. He did this. He _chose_ this, Snow. Not us. We would _never_ threaten magick. Unlike our piss poor headmaster.” 

Simon felt heat rushing to his body. His fists were shaking. “This isn’t his fault, you arse!” 

“Then whose fault is it?” Baz shouted back. “He’s supposed to be in charge. He’s supposed to protect all of us- did you even hear about the virus before something happened at Watford? Did he tell you _anything_ before he shut down our entire _school_? Merlin, Morgan, and Mesthuseluh, Snow, he sent us to what could be our _deaths_ all because he didn’t want to listen, didn’t want us to know anything was wrong. Just the boogeyman and a few worried families daring to question him. And if I die here- if _we_ die- it will be _his_ fault. And nobody else’s.” 

Simon was seeing red. Literally seeing red. The room was wavering in front of his eyes unsteadily, and he could only barely see Baz’s expression change, taking in the destruction that was about to strike. He saw Baz lean into him. He only knew he was shaking because he shook Baz right along with the rest of him. 

“Snow,” Baz said sternly. “Snow.” His voice lost its edge, but stayed just as forceful. “Simon. Deep breaths. Let it go. Some of it. Before you start another fire.” 

Simon tried to breathe, but his throat felt like it was underneath someone’s foot, pressing down. Baz was breathing in front of him, breathing the air in between their two mouths, slow and deliberate, and Simon did his best to try to breathe with him. 

“This won’t help anything,” Baz said, voice closer to a whisper. His eyes were too bright, like tiny fires. Everything about Baz was fire. “Just breathe.” 

It was a long time, or at least it felt like a long time, before the room looked right again. Heat was still pouring off of Simon, and he closed his eyes, pushing the heels of his hands into them. He was still shaking, still breathless. 

He could hear Baz sighing in front of him, relief, probably. At least they wouldn’t have to worry about a fire _and_ a quarantine. 

He opened his eyes. Baz was still leaning into him. His hands were on Simon’s shoulders, tucked into his collarbones. The weight of them was almost familiar, almost comforting. Baz’s eyes were meeting his, and in the back of his mind Simon was thinking, this is what it took, for him to look at me, like I exist. Like I’m not a piece of furniture. The silence stretched with the two of them frozen, Baz’s hair threatening to brush Simon’s cheek, Simon’s chin raised like he’d been hanging from it. 

He leaned back, pushing Baz’s hands away. Baz's arms hovered in the air for half a second before they dropped. It took a moment, still, for either of them to move. Simon felt frozen. And strange. The feeling after going off was like a hangover mixed with getting burned, and he’d been able to stop himself from going off too rarely to know for certain what the after effects felt like. He wasn’t sure how much was _that_ and how much was... There was something going on, something trying to get his attention in the back of his brain, but it was too hard to hold on to a coherent thought, beyond anger, and exhaustion, and Baz. 

He stood up, which pushed Baz to move back to his own side of the room, and dragged himself to the shower. He ran the water cold, and let himself stop thinking. 

Not thinking was the best treat he could give himself, basically at any time, but at the moment it was felt like the absolute best and only thing he could do. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, the quiet in his brain, before his thoughts started trying to reform themselves. 

He couldn’t pinpoint the jumpy feeling in his chest, and in his legs. It _needed_ , the way his muscles complained when he wasn’t training, but in a different way. A way he didn’t know what to do with. He dunked his head under the flow of water. 

As he warmed the water up, once the heat from his skin had gone back to normal, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about what Baz had said. It was nonsense. It had to be. The idea of The Mage knowing something like this was happening and not telling them, not telling Simon, was beyond impossible. After all, he’d closed down the _entire school_ as soon as something happened. 

“Except,” A voice in Simon’s head persisted. “Baz made it sound like something had already happened. Just not on school property. Not with enough people watching.” 

It was ridiculous. 

Anyway, he could have been researching before this. Maybe they’d all been searching for a cure all along. The Mage never told all his secrets. 

Simon dried himself off absentmindedly, and pulled his uniform on. Baz had made a face when he’d dressed in his uniform yesterday, even though they didn’t have any classes, but that was Baz, so he didn’t really care. What else was he supposed to wear? Jeans? Anyway, he’d always liked his uniform. 

He opened the door, bracing himself for a rude comment, or even for Baz to pick the argument back up where they’d left it. Instead, Baz was sitting at his desk, both windows open as wide as they could be now, notebook and textbook in front of him. He could still smell the burnt plastic smell, but less already. 

It unnerved him, a little, to feel like it had never even happened. Not that he wanted Baz harassing him about it. Or like he really wanted to get back to the fight. But it was too strange, ignoring it completely. 

Baz apparently did not feel the same way. Simon dropped down to his bed, then stood back up only a few minutes later, then decided to work on his training stances. His muscles _did_ seem to want to move more than he’d been letting him. Which was, honestly, not very much, since he’d been spending most of every day on his bed, or shuffling through the room. 

He shifted his feet so that he was closer to Baz’s side, until he was almost entirely in Baz’s area. It was the sort of thing that normally would have made Baz threaten him, or call him something rude. Now he was just reading his book even more aggressively, holding the pages directly up to his face as if it was written in a magickly small print. Maybe it was. 

Once he’d gone through all his positions, Baz never once saying a thing about it, there was no choice but for him to go with the last option to pass the time. Studying. 

“Just because there’s no school,” He could hear the Penny in his head say. “doesn’t mean you don’t need to practice your magick. Stay alert! And for Merlin’s sake don’t do anything stupid. Without me.” 

He smiled a little at himself, and cracked open the closest textbook. Magickal Words and Phrases. He took in a deep breath, and tried to focus. 

Baz stood up when the light flashed, that evening, stretching his long legs off the bed like it was some elaborate dance, ending with him exactly where he was supposed to be. 

Simon stood up anyway, shooting him a look. 

“I can get dinner, Snow, you don’t have to be my waiter,” He said with a sneer. 

Simon opened his mouth to shoot back something equally rude, but closed it again, unsure what he was arguing for. 

“I need to leave this room,” Baz told him, glaring at the darkening window. “At the very least to stretch my legs.” 

“You can stretch your legs in the room,” Simon pointed out. 

Baz rolled his eyes. “You’re not my jailer, Snow. And you’re not in control of our food.” 

Simon frowned, but slowly sat back down. Time away from Baz, he told himself, was time away from Baz, no matter which one of them left the room. And he didn’t really feel like fighting, anyway. It felt like it should matter, the leaving and the staying, the arguing in general, but it didn’t really feel that way. Maybe he was just exhausted, from nearly going off hours ago. Or maybe- and he didn’t even like to consider the thought- he felt too grateful to push. 

Baz watched him, like he was fully expecting more objections, but when Simon didn’t say anything else, he simply shrugged, a small, carefully curated gesture, and left, the door closing silently behind him. 

“Damn,” Simon said aloud. “I didn’t remind him to get breakfast.” 

His mood, already lethargic and on the downside of uncertain, soured further. There hadn’t been as much breakfast waiting for them the night before, and he’d had less than he wanted. Baz would probably grab the smallest plate possible to spite him, if he got them anything at all. 

The door opened again, faster than Simon would have expected. Baz had been stuck in the room for long enough that Simon wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d stretched the simple task into 20 minutes or more. But only 5 or so had passed before his pale, slight figure reappeared in the doorway. With three plates. 

Baz moved past him, setting two plates down on Simon’s side. Then, with his newly free hand, reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Butter pats showered the desk. 

“What?” 

Baz looked up at him, though still didn’t quite meet his eye, like he hadn’t decided whether he was ignoring him in full or not. “I expected you to pitch a fit if I didn’t grab an absolutely obscene amount of butter.” 

Simon didn’t answer. Baz had already turned towards his bed anyway, not waiting for the response that wasn’t coming. 

Simon cast a quick look at the butter, like he didn’t trust it to keep its shape. **Rose coloured glasses** was a more advanced spell than he could hope to cast, but Baz could cast in three languages, so it wasn’t impossible. But the butter pats didn’t begin to ooze, or turn into snakes as Simon watched, so either the spell was stronger than usual, or it really was just butter. 

The idea of it made him uncomfortable. 

Baz was facing the wall again, his own plate hidden on his lap. Simon watched him for a few seconds, still curious enough to want to understand what in the world he was doing, yet not feeling motivated enough to press the issue, and too hungry to stare for much longer when his own plate was begging for his attention. 

His eyes kept moving back to the butter. It made his gut twist, a feeling somewhere in between guilt and appreciation. Though neither one made much sense. 

It wasn’t as if Baz had gone out of his way, or even gotten him anything out of the ordinary. It wasn’t even necessarily _for_ Simon in particular. 

Except for what Baz had said. Simon frowned at himself. 

He needed to get out of this room for more than five minutes at a time. Or he needed to throw Baz out the window so he could have the room to himself. 

He lay back on the bed, eyes closed, and shoved roast beef into his mouth. 

He heard Baz make a noise of disgust, but when he lifted his head back up, he wasn’t looking at him. He was staring out the window, face in its perpetual pout, looking like he was deep in- most likely villainous- thought. His already pale skin looked a little paler, like even three days without sun was taking its toll and sucking back all the color from his face. His face looked different in another way too, and Simon wasn’t sure if he hadn't looked closely enough before, or if it had come on scarily sudden. There was a new gauntness to his cheeks, like they were sunken in, and his eyes looked like he hadn’t been sleeping. Above everything else, Baz Pitch looked tired. Bone deep, to the point of breaking, tired. 

Baz turned towards him, and, heart speeding and instinct kicking in, Simon dropped back down, and stared at the ceiling instead.


	3. Chapter 3

Simon woke up out of breath. He wasn’t good at remembering his dreams- it was why his divination grades were utter shite the year Penny had convinced him to take the class. But whatever the specifics, it left him with a racing heart and a dry mouth. And a single thought- leaving. 

The Mage’s letter was still sitting on his desk, carefully refolded. His heart felt like it was being squeezed by a mixture of panic and guilt. No matter what he’d said, Simon couldn’t help but think he could be helping, instead of sitting and waiting for The Mage to solve the problem. A problem that was dangerous to all magick kind! He was supposed to be the saviour of magick. It sounded like a bad deal most of the time, a title too grand to take seriously, and too important for him to carry. But if it meant anything, it meant defending magick against any threats. 

He pushed himself out of bed, thinking of Penny, and Philippa, and The Mage, and Watford, and every good thing that had happened to him since he turned 11. He dressed himself on autopilot, grabbed his wand from where it sat, and bent down to put on his shoes. 

“What are you doing, Snow?” 

Simon looked up to see Baz watching him, a look on his face that was hard to place. He put his head back down and focused on tying knots. 

“ _What_ are you doing, Snow?” Baz asked again, more demanding this time. 

“None of your business,” Simon shot back. 

He saw Baz frown from his peripheral. The other boy shifted until he was standing, nearly over Simon, though leaning back like he was bracing himself, or avoiding something. 

“I’ll be the judge of that.” 

Simon straightened back up. “Stay out of my way, Baz.” 

Baz took a step closer. “Are you really this dumb, Snow? Is this actually what it looks like?” 

Simon took a step forward, and Baz did the same. 

“Are you about to boy-hero yourself into an actual _viral_ pandemic? You do know you can’t swordfight a virus, don’t you?” 

Simon scowled. “Get out of the way!” 

“Did he tell you to?” Baz asked, voice taking on an edge. “Is he sending out soldiers at the drop of a hat, even in the middle of all this?” 

“No,” Simon forced out, still trying to move without pushing directly into Baz. He was careful, since second year, not to let his aggression get physical and accidentally cross the room’s invisible line. Though at the moment it seemed worth it to push Baz aside. 

“So you’re offering yourself up because, what? Because you’re bloody bored?” 

“No!” 

“Sit down, Snow!” 

“No!” Simon yelled again. 

“Sit your arse down and stop trying to die for _one second_!” 

“Shouldn’t you want me dead?” Simon shot back. 

“Yes, it _would_ make it easier!” Baz spat back. 

“I _have_ to. I can’t just-” 

Baz leaned closer to him, and Simon begrudgingly took a step back. 

“You have to _what_? Die in the name of The Mage? Probably, Snow, but not for a few months at least. Are you really that desperate for your own ending? Or do you need to be the hero _every_ second of _every_ bloody day?” 

Simon’s fist was up and level with Baz’s face before he’d realized what he was doing. Baz’s eyes tripled in size. 

“Snow.” He said it in the same tone he’d talked him down the day before, and it only made Simon’s heart beat faster. He squeezed his fist, still not bringing it down. 

“Snow.” His voice rose, spiked. “Anathema. Don’t.” 

He sounded genuinely worried. Scared. That was what made Simon drop his arm back to his side. 

Baz took a step back, so quickly it was like he’d hit him anyway, like he’d lit him on fire. 

“Do what you want, Snow,” He said, through clenched teeth. “Go die if you want to. Why should I care?” 

He left Simon standing in front of the closed door, barely breathing. 

The thing was, Baz was right. He had only ever been the one trying to push him to the edge, try to get him beaten, beat him himself, then one most gleefully waiting for him to die fighting. There was no reason for him to care whether he lived or died, except, maybe, celebrate the latter. But... 

He could see Baz’s eyes too clearly in his mind. Wide, desperate, angry. He’d seen Baz in every stage of cool and blasee, but that look didn’t match any of those versions of him. 

Baz _cared_. And Simon wasn’t sure what to do with that information. Wasn’t even entirely sure what that information _was_. Was he hoping for him to go another way? From some plan that had been interrupted by the virus? As a sacrifice for the Wars? 

The thought grated on him in a way that made him feel restless, like he’d only just noticed the walls around him, the boy between them. 

Baz wasn’t looking at him, with the intensity of somebody putting all their energy into ignoring someone else. Simon felt stuck to the floor, unsure what to do, and eventually managed to sit himself back down. There was the question of what to do now- talk, fight, obsess over the questions in his head- and in the end he followed Baz’s lead, and just ignored. 

Simon put as much of his mind as would cooperate to studying. On the best of days it was an activity that made him feel worn and ready for any distraction, but with his still wandering mind it was an even more difficult struggle. It didn’t help that he couldn’t cast spells, either. Well, Simon assumed that he probably _could_ , and Baz wouldn’t try to stop him. But it was more an issue of Baz being there at all, a witness to Simon’s magick, that Baz had already called shoddy too many times for his liking. Plus, if his mind kept up as it was then there was a very real chance of something going wrong, and that would either lead to, best case scenario, Baz yelling, or, worse case, one of them dying. 

So he tried to take in the words of his textbook, even as they blurred in front of his eyes, which kept closing of their own accord. Every so often he snuck a look at Baz, with the creeping suspicion that he’d find something new there, but he was always sitting still, studying with apparent better results than Simon. Like a bloody Watford poster boy. 

Simon did his best to keep his eyes down. Focused. Doing _something_ , at least, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to be doing. Saving the world. Talking to Penny. Starting a fight. Asking the Mage what in magick’s name was going on. Getting a firm talk from Penny’s mum, since she never minced words at least, and she could let him know just how worried he was meant to be. Stop holding his breath for something to happen. Stop holding his breath for nothing to _stop_ happening. Go back to sleep for a full three days at least. Eat a table full of scones. Talk to Penny. Ask Baz why he wasn’t sleeping. Go off on Baz for real this time. Talk to Penny. 

He shook his head, hanging over the pages of his textbook. Not helping. 

These days were all too long. Too endless and uncertain. The thing about being the Chosen One, was that everyone assumed you were going to die at any minute- the right minute, hopefully. Simon included. So endless and uncertain was precisely the opposite of what he was comfortable with. Short, violent, and foretold was more like it. 

Short, violent, and foretold could still be what this whole mess turned in to, if Baz kept prodding at him like he was. He looked like he was waiting for something too, something deadlier than Simon was. But maybe that was how he always looked. No, it wasn’t. Simon knew what he always looked like. Death, yeah, and waiting, but something to break them up, like he knew what he was doing, and how to do it. It normally made Simon want to punch him. 

Baz stood up from the bed, and Simon had managed to stare at the pages, if not actually read the words or take in any information, well enough that it was a moment before he realized why. He stood up. 

Baz rolled his eyes. 

“Not again, Snow.” 

“I can go,” Simon pushed, because it felt like what he was supposed to do. 

“What’s the difference?” Baz said. 

“ _What’s_ the difference,” Simon echoed back, accusingly. 

Baz frowned, like he was being difficult on purpose. Well, that was fair. 

“Can we just skip this, Snow?” 

“No.” He set his jaw. This, at least, felt like doing something. 

Baz narrowed his eyes. “I’m going,” He said. “so if you want to run that bad, you can just scale down from the window.” 

Simon frowned, not following immediately. 

“Or jump,” Baz suggested. 

“I wasn’t going- That’s not why I said I’d go.” 

“Sure.” 

“It’s _not_ ,” Simon objected. 

“Then there’s no reason for me not to,” Baz said back. Simon’s eyes fell on Baz’s cheeks again. So tired. Both of them, he guessed. 

“Fine.” 

Baz let out a breath, like he’d been saving air for a blow out. Then he walked out of the room, slow and calm. 

He came back as quickly as he had the night before, and Simon still found himself wondering why he didn’t take the chance to linger, bother anybody else, chat up Cook Pritchard, if she really was down there. 

Baz walked over to the head of his bed, and put one of the plates- the larger one, Simon couldn’t help but note. Baz must’ve thought he was a bottomless pit- down on his comforter. He reached into his pocket, again, and released a new shower of butter pats. Simon opened his mouth to say something- maybe just “thanks”, maybe a well deserved “why?”- but Baz was already gone by the time he decided which to go with, sitting on his own bed, and studiously ignoring Simon’s presence. 

The butter sat in its unassuming, inherently suspicious pile. Simon half-expected it to be poisoned (would that count as breaking the anathema? if he ate poison by himself? was that a loophole he’d looked into?). But what was the point of that? Then again, what was the point of any of it- not the big stuff, the war stuff, the fist fights and the tricks. Maybe that was what this was, all of it, a break in the endless, senseless fighting. 

Baz didn’t _look_ like he was plotting anything. Though it was hard to tell, with his face turned all the way to the wall like that. The sight of him there made Simon clench his jaw. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a mental gallery of Baz on the room, images he’d memorized without ever meaning to or wanting to, but this new image of him, eyes never lokcing outside of his side of the room, face angled towards the wall, made him feel a frustrated, swooping feeling. 

He was lonely. 

A new level of lonely, he thought, for him to even be thinking this way. 

At the Children’s homes he was sure he’d gotten close, maybe even crossed that line when he was young enough, but he didn’t remember his life before Watford well enough to be sure. Even since Penny, and since The Mage, there'd been a knowledge that he had _someone_. He still did, he reminded himself. Just not in the room. It was only that, right now, that felt like it might as well have been in America. 

He may have been going mad. Baz wasn’t his friend. They’d never even really had the option to be. 

Sure, Simon would have been willing, back when they first met. More than, really, because Baz looked like everything Simon had thought a magick school would be, everything it could turn him into. If Baz hadn’t been such a wanker then maybe there would have been a chance. But Baz had never wanted that, even back then. That wasn’t about to change, nearly 7 years down the line. 

He wasn’t actively trying to kill him, which was, admittedly, strange, but it was a good thing. As long as they both survived without one of them breaking the anathema, everything would be fine. That was the goal. The only thing he could hope for. 

And Baz. Well, he was saving his own skin. Avoiding getting singed. Avoiding getting a black eye. And that was it. 

Simon threw himself back into studying, actually managing a few pages of real reading. He wondered how he would have down on the Elocution test. Probably shite. 

The windows had stayed open since Baz had opened them. First to air the room out- Baz and Penny both said that Simon going off smelled like an electric fire. Separately. The idea of Baz and Penny saying anything _together_ was too strange to even picture. But neither one of them had thought to close them. The wind moving through them was the cold of early spring, the kind that made you glad you had a blanket, or the kind that made you wish you were lying in the grass instead of in your crumb filled bed, staring at an off white ceiling. 

As the sun lowered, and they went through the motions- even less spiritedly- of arguing over who left the room for food (Baz won out again), the air turned cooler. Simon had goosebumps on his arms, bare since he’d take his jacket off. He rubbed one arm with his hand, accidentally smearing a small amount of gravy on his skin. 

He’d given up the idea of studying an hour ago, and was just about ready to give up the pretense as well. The food was lovely and warm, and for a few minutes it was all the distraction he needed. Then his eyes fell on Baz again. 

His plate was untouched, a foot away from where Baz was sitting. 

Does he ever eat, Simon thought, almost directly before Baz finally took the plate in his hand. As Simon watched, he turned himself towards the blank walls, and put the plate in his lap. Simon furrowed his brow. 

Not friends. Baz couldn’t even stand to look at him. Couldn’t even eat, he thought, if he had to see Simon’s face at the same time. 

Maybe he _did_ need to play the hero. Be the center of attention. That must be why the lack of Baz’s eyes on him felt so frustrating, like an unsolvable problem teasing at him. Maybe he was everything The Families had ever said, or thought. 

No. That was bollocks. 

Simon huffed, and got up, suddenly too aggravated to stay sitting for a second longer. He grabbed his clothes, and headed towards the bathroom, just for something to do. He paced in the bathroom, where no one could see him. Or tell that he was, maybe, going insane. 

He turned off his thoughts the best that he could, by trying simple spells. He still had that lethargic, aching feeling, like there was a muscle he needed to flex. Nothing with fire. Nothing too complicated. 

“ ** _A place for everything, and everything in its place_**.” Simon looked around the room, but couldn’t tell if the spell had actually done anything, Baz kept the room so tidy. And Simon didn’t have much of his own to clutter it with. All he ever used was the soap Watford gave them, anway. 

He pointed his wand at himself. “ ** _Clean as a whistle_**.” 

He thought he felt a soft scraping feeling on his skin, where the goosebumps had been, and were again, but it didn’t have such a great effect. Sitting on the bed all day didn’t get you quite as dirty as running on the fields, or fighting monsters. Simon pressed his foot into the floor, nudging around a few crumbs that had collected under him. 

His magick felt off. Off in a different way that it always did. He pointed the wand at himself again, but couldn’t come up with anything worth doing, or easy enough to try. 

Maybe he just felt off. 

Simon climbed into the shower, feeling like he was stuck on one day on repeat, like maybe he should have been carving little tallies into the wall like they always did in films on tv. The feeling persisted when he came back out, skin red and scrubbed, with Baz in the same position he’d been in for what felt like days, newly empty plate sitting on his desk. 

Simon laid down and closed his eyes. He jumped when he heard someone move, but seconds later he realized it was only Baz, turning off his light. 

The darkness made the room feel bigger. Like he was somewhere floating through space, without anyone around for miles. 

The wind blew through the windows, sounding sad and eerie. He toyed with the idea of closing it, then thought about the room in total silence, and reconsidered. 

What would Penny say? About any of this? He hoped she was okay. At least she was smart enough to stay in her room. The worst danger there was that her roommate, Trixie, would make her break the anathema (not that Penny would, she was too smart. She would at least find a good loophole. Maybe _she’d_ poisoned their butter). 

He listened to the sounds of the room, the wind and the distant hooting of an owl, listened closer for any noise of Baz’s. He was so silent it was as if he had gotten up and left without Simon noticing. 

What would Penny think of that? Of Baz? 

“He’s just being nice, Simon,” The Penny in his head said. Or, maybe not. “He’s trying to lull you into complacency!” The Penny in his head tried out. He let out a frustrated sigh. 

“Nicks and Slick, how should _I_ know, Simon?” The Penny in his head said. “I’m not even here.” 

The room was too quiet, even with the wind. The absence of noise was too much like the absence of Penny, and the absence of Penny was too much a reminder. Of how dangerous it was, just be alive, here, at Watford. Of how alone he was. It really was too quiet. 

“Baz?” The name was barely more than a whisper, out of his mouth before he could second guess himself. 

Baz was silent so long, Simon started to seriously worry that he’d slipped out of the room. He was just about to pull down the covers, get out of bed, when, “I’m right here, Snow.” 

Something in him relaxed, even as the rest of him tensed, at the bored, above-it tone of his voice. 

“Where else would you be?” Simon shot back, no longer whispering. 

The silence fell again, and Simon felt himself begin to worry again- Merlin knew for what. 

“Where else indeed?” 

There was a knowing _something_ in his voice, a softness, that made Simon’s face hot. He turned over away from Baz, and folded the pillow over his ears. 

He clenched his eyes closed, pretending he’d be able to sleep. 


	4. Chapter 4

Simon rolled his shoulders. His whole body felt tense and uncomfortable. He’d spent most of the night trying to sleep and badly failing. By the time he’d actually fallen asleep, he was still too jumpy to sleep through the sounds of Baz getting up, and he lay there and listened to the sounds of moving covers, and the muffled water from the shower. Baz didn’t look like he’d slept much better. From the few glances Simon had risked, his eyes looked just as dark and exhausted as they had the day before. 

For the most part, he was doing his best not to look at Baz at all. Not just because staring at his roommate may have looked a little daft, and he couldn’t explain himself without having to ask if Baz was okay (he was probably fine, anyway) and having a conversation that would be, at the very least, incredibly uncomfortable, but also because Baz was making it difficult to look at him. He had spent the morning the same way he’d spent the days before, never really looking at Simon, or even his side of the room, sometimes going so out of his way it would have been funny if it weren’t also irritating. For the most part Simon could make himself ignore it, or at least think about it less. It was the close quarters that made him care at all. On any other day, Baz not paying attention to him would probably be a blessing. But since lunch (Simon had gotten it this time, and they hadn’t really fought about it, but that was partially just because Baz hadn’t said _anything_. It was _that_ level of ignoring. The prat.) he’d changed tactics. Now every time Simon raised his own eyes towards him, Baz was already looking. More than looking, really. It was unnerving. 

There was looking like “accidentally”- Simon had definitely accidentally stared himself into some odd, sometimes aggressive, situations just because he hadn’t noticed where his eyes had been pointed. And there was regular looking. Like a person. Whatever it was Baz was doing, it was different. More active. More like scheming. There was too much going on behind his eyes. 

Baz was taking a break from creepily staring like he was considering how best to eat him (maybe that _was_ what he was thinking about), and Simon was trying to take advantage of the situation. He was out of practice, and it made him feel jumpy and unprepared. And his roommate was a vampire, looking at him like Merlin himself couldn’t stop him from getting whatever he wanted. And he thought he could still feel Baz’s gaze, heavy on him. 

He shook the feeling off, best he could, focused anywhere else. His arms felt heavy at his sides, hanging limply like they’d forgotten what they were meant to be doing. Training usually helped him relax, or at least feel less like he knew piss what he was supposed to be doing. He stretched, his arms first, then his legs. The wind from the open windows pushed up the bottom of his shirt, and he felt goosebumps raise. 

He switched to another stretch, and froze when he heard Baz shift. After a few seconds, Simon refusing to look and see for himself what exactly he was doing, he heard a book open. Simon stopped stretching, and shifted into his first training position. 

“ ** _Cushion the blow_**.” 

The feeling of magick made Simon jump back before he’d processed the actual spell, the sword’s pledge already half to his lips. Baz had his wand in his hands, but it wasn’t pointed towards Simon. The tip was pointed squarely at the ground in front of Baz’s bed, which now resembled something like a lightly melted slab of plastic. As Simon watched, Baz tested it with his foot, bouncing slightly as he did. Then he pointed his wand at it again and said, “ ** _On solid ground_**.” 

He rose up a little as the ground straightened underneath him, like he’d gone through a sudden, subtle growth spurt. 

Simon moved to the next position, but his eyes were still on Baz, who was holding his wand with a thoughtful expression. It wasn’t until now that Simon had really thought about how much he missed magick. 

His own magick, when it actually came, wasn’t something he liked much, or at least not something he ever liked to rely on, or missed using when he was with the Normals. But magick, casual, every day magick, made his heart hurt. Baz cast the same spell again, and then the counter spell, never once looking up. 

It wasn’t a hard spell, or an impressive one. Dead useful, when you were stuck in a well or somewhere equally uncomfortable. Or just on the ground with nothing to lay on. Penny had used it a few times. Simon was too afraid he’d do the whole grounds, and no one would ever be able to get to class again without feeling like they were on a trampoline. But there was something elegant to it too, that he’d never really seen when Penny had cast it. Or, maybe he was just sick for it, after 5 days of nothing. 

“ ** _Up, up and away_**.” 

Baz’s empty plate gracefully floated into the air, as if it had moved simply because it had wanted to. He directed it into an intricate spiral of a dance, three feet above the desktop. 

“ ** _And we all fall down_**.” 

When Simon cast that spell he was always worried whatever he’d been levitating would break- sometimes worried for good reason. Penny thought he was overly focused on the “fall” part, and the spell could tell. Baz must not have had that problem, his plate set itself down nearly soundlessly. Everything Baz did was gentler than it seemed like it would be, excluding the times he was being as cruel and violent as possible. 

Baz’s expression turned thoughtful again before he moved his wand, pointing at nothing apparent. 

“ ** _The end of the rainbow_**.” 

It took a second for the spell to take effect, a breath before the colors slowly began to spread. Pale pastels first, then bright and vivid. The air in front of Baz’s face, all the way to the doorframe, was shimmering with a wide, perfect rainbow. 

“I’ve never seen that one.” Simon wasn’t even bothering to pretend he was still training now. Or that he wasn’t watching. 

Baz stiffened, and the rainbow flickered very slightly, before he cocked his head towards Simon. 

“It’s a child’s spell.” 

“It’s pretty.” 

They looked at the rainbow in silence. Baz shrugged. 

“It’s just a cheer-you-up,” He said, voice flat. “A spell you cast for children, when they’re worried or upset.” 

Simon’s eyes were still following the arc of the rainbow. 

“Did your mum used to cast it for you?” 

Baz’s expression tightened, and Simon remembered. 

The rainbow faded slowly, until it was impossible to tell if it was there at all, or just a trick of the light. 

Simon didn’t move, even after the colors had left completely, leaving the room looking small and bland. The sight of it, the ever present 4 walls, and the filtered sunlight, squeezed at him, until he sucked in a sudden breath, and started to move again. 

He thrust his hand forward, imagining the sword there (he tried not to practice with it in the dorm, since the time he’d impaled his pillowcase, and nearly caught Baz too). At least he could still move. Even if there was nowhere to go, and no one he could fight. Merlin, it really would have been so much better if you _could_ sword fight a virus. He wondered if anyone had tried it. 

He lost his footing, knocked into the bed, and threw himself back with so much force he nearly fell in again in the opposite direction. In the back of his mind, he knew Baz was watching, didn’t know how he felt about it, didn’t have the energy or concentration to give a bigger piece of his brain to it. 

He lurched forward, foot slamming against the floor, then wheeled himself around in a tight circle, so that the wind whooshed past his face like a physical object, pressing into him. His heart was racing. And it wasn’t helping, not really. Or, maybe it was helping something, but not enough. Not without creating more problems, poking holes in what he already had. 

His chest was tight, and he realized he wasn’t breathing, but couldn’t make himself. He thought his arm might have been shaking. He thrust it forward anyway. The positions were perfectly memorized in his mind. One thing to rely on. The things he’d learned at magick school, that he hadn’t expected from a magick school, but were the only parts of it he knew for sure he could do. 

“Snow.” 

Simon forced himself still, and it was harder than it should have been. Harder than it had been in a long time. 

“Snow.” He wasn’t sure how many times Baz had already said his name. 

He was looking at him now, in a different way. More of a human way, but equally as scary as the brooding he’d been doing before, because he looked like he was trying to look bored, but it was too obvious that it was just an attempt. A stiff, blank mask, hastily put on. Simon looked away. 

“What?” The word came out stronger than he’d feared it would. Good. Didn’t even matter that it had shaken, a little. 

“Come here.” 

Simon looked up, eyes narrowing. 

Baz frowned. “Just come here and stop knocking yourself into all your possessions before you run out of your own things and move onto mine.” 

“Why? What are you going to do?” 

Baz looked annoyed. Simon didn’t really care. 

“You’re obviously....” He raised an eyebrow instead of finishing. 

“I’m...” Simon ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I’m getting agoraphobic!” 

“It’s claustrophobic, you idiot,” Baz corrected him. 

“Whatever it is.” 

“You’re going stir crazy,” Baz said, and his face looked closer to normal. Still gaunt, and a little on edge, but- well, they were both a bit on edge, weren’t they? 

“Maybe,” Simon agreed begrudgingly. 

“Then come here.” 

Simon still hesitated, but took a step forward. He stopped again when Baz reached for his wand. 

Baz looked annoyed, brow furrowed. “I’m not trying to do anything to you, Snow.” 

Simon’s disbelief must have shown on his face. 

“I’ve been working on a spell,” Baz said. “for next year.” 

The mandatory spell creation for eighth years was a stressful enough thought that Simon had barely even dwelled on it enough to remember he was expected to participate in it once he’d been told that it existed, years ago. 

“Already?” Simon asked, still feeling a bit suspicious, but a little impressed as well, in spite of himself. 

“Some of us actually focus on our studies,” Baz said, coolly. 

Simon glared at him. 

“Anyway,” Baz started up again, forcefully. “I think it could help.” 

“You’re trying to convince me to let you cast a spell on me that _you_ made?” Simon’s eyebrows shot up. 

“No, not _on_ you.” 

“What if it doesn’t work?” 

“It works,” Baz said, and there was no room for argument. 

“What does it do?” Simon asked, slowly. And he was already too close to swayed. The idea of Baz pointing his wand anywhere near him was usually enough to have him calling for his sword. And most of the time he would be right to do so. But that inner alarm that went off whenever he needed to fight was broken, or overwound, and he needed something, to break the monotony at least. Something different. 

Baz was quiet for a few seconds, expression unreadable. Simon wondered if he was going to take back his invitation, 

Then he smiled a grim smile, and said, “It makes this room feel bigger.” 

“Okay.” 

Baz’s bed was just like his own, but also not the same at all, because it was _Baz’s_. Simon paused in front of it, waiting for something to either curse him or mark the occasion. Nothing happened except for him sitting, on a mattress just like his own, but smelling like Baz instead. 

At first, neither of them moved. If Simon thought that it was an emotion he could even feel, he would have said Baz looked nervous. He was staring at the floor, and Simon wondered if he should be nervous too. The idea of a new spell probably should have made him more worried than it did, honestly. But, whether it was just because of 5 days of quarantine or his curiosity becoming just too hard to argue with in general, he wasn’t. 

The bed shifted when Baz did, and Simon stared at the hand in front of him. Baz was looking grim again. 

“We have to hold hands.” 

“Oh.” 

Simon put his hand in Baz’s. It was cold, like the rest of Baz, and soft. Probably from one of his soaps or oils he kept out of the bathroom. 

Baz closed his eyes and took a slow, long breath. 

“ ** _Around the world in 80 days_**.” 

Simon’s eyes went wide. It wasn’t an instant change, more like the slow spread of the rainbow’s color. He was in their room, with its walls and beds, but as he watched, the shadows twisted into new shapes. Intricate, tiered strokes of darkness that, laid out before them, took on colors and dimension. 

Even after watching it happen, even feeling the wall behind his back, it was hard to believe that they were still in Watford. The building before them looked like a palace, made up with orange and greens and blues, and carved shapes he hadn’t even realized you were allowed to have on a building. 

It was a bloody good piece of spellwork, he wasn’t loathe to admit. He chanced a look at Baz, who was looking a mix of surprised and full of himself. 

“Where are we?” Simon asked. “Is this real?” 

“It’s real as in it exists,” Baz said. “but we’re not there, if that’s what you mean.” 

“Not where, though?” 

“Russia.” 

Simon gawked at it. _Russia_. 

“Did you choose this? Or does the spell just show you Russia?” 

Baz’s lips quirked. “No, Snow, I didn’t make a spell specifically to show you Russia. I didn’t choose it either, I don’t think. It just... I’m not entirely sure yet.” 

Simon was reminded again that this should have bothered him. Penny would probably scream if he told her. Though if it was Penny in his shoes, he was sure she would have made the same decision, with far more questions, and turned the whole thing into a bit of an interrogation. 

The city- city?- moved past them like it was a kite in a breeze. The palace got larger in Simon’s eyes, towering before him, until it faded, with the rest of it. Disappointment flooded Simon’s body. 

Until Russia was replaced, with a forest, greener than any he’d ever seen. It didn’t look like the Wavering Woods, it looked free, and open. 

“What about now?” Simon asked. It came out as a whisper. “Where are we now?” 

“Scotland,” Baz answered, in a voice just as low as Simon’s. 

The trees loomed above them, great, majestic things that looked like they were made, entirely, of magick. Simon thought he felt Baz’s eyes on him, and swiped a quick hand against his eyes, just in case. Trees didn’t usually make him all that emotional- emotional at all, really- but maybe he’d never really looked at trees before. Or appreciated the world outside of his bedroom. Outside of Watford. 

“The Caledonian Forest,” Baz added. 

“Hmm?” Simon tore his eyes away from the moss and the water and the trees, and looked up at Baz, who looked away. “Oh. It’s lovely.” 

“I thought-” Baz cut himself off, clearing his throat. 

The trees, just like the Russian city, faded away, still swaying. Simon held his breath, waiting. 

The shadows rearranged themselves into more buildings, square where the first had been round, wide where the trees had been thin. As color drained into it, it took on a sandy, raw look. There was a tug at his hand, like Baz was righting himself. 

He looked up at Baz, mouth open, ready to ask, but stopped at the sight of him. It was like all pretense had fallen away, and left him without a mask. If the city was raw, Baz was beyond that. Vulnerable, Simon realized, with a shock. 

“Egypt,” Baz said, answering Simon’s unasked question. 

Simon looked around. “Where are the pyramids?” 

That shook the look off of Baz’s face. “The entire bloody country isn’t pyramids, Snow.” 

“Oh, yeah, I... I know.” 

Baz raised an eyebrow. “Do you?” But there was no heat behind it. 

“Where are we, then? Exactly.” 

Baz shook his head. “I don’t know.” 

Simon looked surprised. “You haven’t been here?” 

“No.” Baz locked his jaw, then sighed. He leaned back, until his shoulders were on Simon’s, as if he’d forgotten where they were entirely. Or, maybe, _who_ they were. “My mum always told me we’d visit. She used to go see all the family that still lives here every couple of years. But I never got the chance. Father doesn’t like the idea of it.” 

Simon wasn’t sure what to say, so he kept his mouth closed. The silence stretched out, both of them watching the buildings. Baz’s hand was warm in his now, still gripping his like he was sure he was going to fall. The bed beneath them seemed far less real than the sight of Egypt in front of their eyes. The weight of Baz’s hand on his felt more real than the past 5 days. 

Baz looked worse, in the sunlight- unfiltered sunlight. For the first time, Simon actually let himself wonder if it really was the illness. He felt a little strangled at the thought. 

Baz was still staring, eyes too big and too sad, and it felt, suddenly like he could lose him. 

“How does the spell work, then?” Simon broke the silence. He was still whispering and he wasn’t sure why. 

He thought he could hear wind, but wasn’t sure if it was the spell or just the window. 

Baz raised an eyebrow, looking at him now. His eyes were still a little lost. “You’re interested in magickal theory?” 

“I’m curious,” Simon said. He leaned towards a building, pulling on Baz’s arm as he did. “I would have thought you’d have to go there first.” 

“Not go,” Baz shook his head. “just know enough about it. What it looks like, at least. Well enough to-” He raised the hand not holding on to Simon’s, gestured to the image before them. 

“I don’t think it would work for me,” Simon said, and a flush crept up his face. “I only really know Watford. You’re lucky.” 

“No,” Baz said, voice low “I just look at a lot of maps. And pictures.” He looked down at the sand at their feet. “I’m very observant.” 

“Could you take us somewhere else?” Simon asked. Egypt was already beginning to disappear. “I always wanted to see the world.” 

Baz looked at him, and Simon smiled, an unsure thing that made his face feel even hotter. 

“I’m pretty sure this is the only way I’m going to get to,” He admitted. 

Baz looked like he wanted to argue, eyebrows pulled down, mouth open, but the words never came out. Simon was glad, honestly. Everyone knew how it was going to end. And that it was going to be soon. 

Baz stretched out his fingers, then locked his shoulders back, squeezing his hand, and closed his eyes again. 

This time Simon closed his eyes too, to let the change be a miracle, instead of watching it take itself apart and back together again. There weren’t enough surprises in his life, he decided. Not good ones. 

Baz was looking at him. Somehow he knew it, even with his eyes shut. Just like he knew, without knowing how, that it would only last as long as he knew Simon wasn’t looking back. 

The feeling of it, his gaze, taking Simon in, made something in him finally relax. He let go of a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. 

It was dark. The lights from below were like multi-colored stars of all shapes and sizes. He heard the wind rush by, felt it brush his hair in front of his eyes. A car revved its engine, softened by the distance and the mix of noise surrounding it, the sound of people living. It felt alive. 

“Manhattan,” Baz said, and his voice was closer than Simon had expected. 

“I guessed,” Simon replied, with a little smile. “I’ve seen pictures.” 

“Where would you go?” Baz asked, suddenly. “If you could?” 

Simon thought for a few seconds, then a few seconds longer. He closed his eyes again, listening to the city. “I don’t know. I think....” He took a breath. It tasted like night air, in the best way. “I think I would just want to go somewhere that. Felt like something. Different. Somewhere I didn’t have to worry about staying on guard, or knowing the right thing to do, or _being_ someone. Somewhere I could just... do what I wanted. Without having to think it through, or- or making sure it played into some grand plot. Or destiny. Somewhere with a... a future.” 

He opened his eyes slowly, and let them jump from light to light, wondering what was behind them, who was moving underneath them. 

He sighed. “I know, that sounds stupid.” 

“Selfish,” Baz said, but when Simon looked at him, his defenses weren’t up. He was smiling, a little. 

“Maybe.” 

The wind blew again, carrying sounds of cars honking and groups of people laughing. 

“You deserve to be selfish,” Baz said. “You’re allowed.” 

Simon chewed at his lip, shaking his head. He could tell him a million reasons why that was wrong. But really, he didn’t want to. 

He let himself pretend, for a minute, that this was real. He was in America, he was seeing the world. And Baz Pitch was staring at him and telling him he was allowed. 

He turned, and for the first time neither one of them looked away. Simon leaned in, hair rising as the wind blew through it, and froze, inches from Baz’s face. 

He looked pained. He looked like he wanted something. He looked afraid. But he didn’t move. And his eyes were already falling to Simon’s mouth. 

Simon released a long breath, and closed the distance between them. 

Baz’s mouth was cold and gentle, and so unlike Simon would have expected, if he’d ever let himself picture this moment. Everything with Baz was a fight, everything but this. Because this was like the moment before a spell, when your magick rose up and anything in the world felt like it could happen. Like you might get burned, but it was worth it, and you couldn’t stop it now, even if you wanted to. 

His mind, for once, had stopped its frantics circles and questions, because there was only one thing worth thinking about. Kissing Baz. Kissing. Baz. Who had taken him to see New York City, and told him to be selfish. 

It felt... right. It felt like the first right thing he’d done in days. Maybe longer. 

Baz’s mouth was still underneath his own, and the thought broke through, that Baz wasn’t kissing him back. He pulled away, through the fog in his head, and Baz’s head followed him for a few inches, like they were still connected. 

Manhattan was gone, and it was day again. The pale nothing-colored walls felt like they had gotten closer while Simon had looked away, the bed suddenly more obvious underneath him. 

Baz’s face was unreadable beyond shock. His mouth was still open, like no one had told it yet that the kiss had ended. And he was staring at Simon, but didn’t look like he was actually seeing him. Frozen. 

Simon slid off the bed so fast he nearly crashed to the ground. He let the bathroom door swing shut behind him, then collapsed against it, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes like he could push the memory out of his head. 

He wasn’t sure how long it was before he heard the door shut. He slunk out of the bathroom and climbed into his bed. 

When Baz came back, he had the decency to pretend Simon was asleep. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to being just about half-way done with this fic! From here on out I'll be updating every day instead of every other until the finaly chapter, chapter 9, goes up.

Simon’s head felt like it had a cloud of flibbertygibbets in it. His eyes kept trying to close again, and he was past the point of trying to stop them. Even if sleep wasn’t going to come, it wasn’t like he had anything to keep his eyes open for, not like he had politickal science. The three, or maybe four, hours of sleep he’d managed felt worse than no sleep at all. 

His pretend sleep hadn’t slipped into the real thing until it was nearly sun up. His body had jerked awake not long after, still trying to keep time as it had before, and the sleep that followed was full of hazy anxiousness and confused scenes of night skies and shadows and, always on the edge of things, almost blurred, Baz. Something about them made him feel like he was suffocating, and he pushed away from them as they came, focusing instead on the warmth of his comforter. 

The fog was starting to lift, slowly and unwillingly, as Simon lay still. The memory of his dreams began to shift, a feeling of deja vu rousing him into actually thinking. He remembered Baz’s bed. He remembered Baz, and his mouth. 

Simon sat up. Then wished he hadn’t. Pretending to sleep did still seem like the right move. 

Baz was sitting at his desk. If it wasn’t for the tense, too still way he was holding himself, Simon would have thought he hadn’t noticed him sitting up at all. He didn’t breathe once as Simon’s eyes took him in, like he could feel them on him. 

A rush of jumbled emotions were already bombarding Simon as he sat and rubbed his eyes, and when he looked away from Baz it was with relief. He grabbed a fresh uniform from his wardrobe- the last clean one, actually- and changed in the bathroom. 

Baz was still sitting at his desk when Simon came back into the room. But his face wasn’t tilted down now locked onto the floor, but instead was leaning into the light, eyes closed against the sunlight from the window closest to him. 

Simon felt something in him seize like it was stuck. He took a deep breath, hoping to dislodge it. 

Baz looked bad. Simon sat down, with every intention to do his work or eat his breakfast without feeling like he had an audience, but it wasn’t working out that way. How could it, when Baz looked... like that. The dark color around his eyes was an ashy gray, nearly black, and his skin was so white it was like the color of it had been entirely bled away. He opened his eyes, and Simon saw they were bloodshot. 

The expression on his face, when he noticed was Simon watching, was enough to make Simon wish that he wasn’t. The only word to describe it, was hungry. For the first time, Baz looked like a vampire. 

He had the style, the image- before now Simon would have said Baz had _always_ looked like a vampire. But he had never looked _like_ this before. He was, as a rule, larger than life, like he owned every room he walked into, and he was still taking up that same amount of space, but now it was like he was barely there, somehow at the same time. A flickering, fighting. Like he was on the edge of death, and he would do anything to cling to it. 

Simon ripped his eyes away, and worried away at the scone in his hands. It felt like watching a bomb. 

Six days. How long could he stand it? Was he going to break? Was he going to die? Simon sucked in a breath. Was he going to have to be the one to _kill_ him? 

Simon shook his head, like he could shake the thought out of it. No. Baz was probably a vampire, but then he’d been a vampire for years, right? And he’d managed. 

How did he even know what a vampire looked like? Maybe he was just sick. 

Simon spent the better part of an hour ignoring that specific thought, until it broke free again. At this point Baz was still at his desk, still ignoring Simon like his life was depending on it, but the light in the room was refusing to hide a single thing. As Simon’s eyes drifted back up again and found Baz, his stomach flipped. 

Crowley, what if he _was_ sick? 

He ran through The Mage’s announcement in his head, as best he could remember it. Had he ever described what it would look like? Simon struggled to think of a single thing The Mage _had_ said about it specifically, but couldn’t. 

He grabbed the note from where it lay on his desk and scanned it for something helpful. He let out a frustrated breath. Still nothing but vague warnings. 

A virus couldn’t make his skin look that waxy, could it? 

He hadn’t heard Baz speak yet- maybe he couldn’t. What were you supposed to do, if your roommate got taken down by a mysterious, dangerous illness? And if that was what it was, was he going to catch it, just by breathing the same air as him? An image flickered through Simon’s mind. Just by.... 

He flushed. 

His heart was beating too fast, and suddenly it was hard to do much else besides stare at the notebook in front of him, where his eyes had locked themselves. He felt Baz’s presence like a physical thing, weighing down on him and waiting to crush him. 

He swung himself off of the bed again and headed for the bathroom. It felt good, at least, to slam the door shut. He slid down against the door as soon as it was closed, until his head fell back against it, legs stretched as far as they could on the cold floor. 

Here, at least, he knew no one was looking. His eyes moved from the sink to the shower, traced the figures on the wall. They were familiar in a way that made him relax, a little. Why was it that the place he’d spent every night and every day for ten months of the past seven years suddenly felt like it was a foreign country. The same, but not if you looked close enough. It made Simon’s breath catch in his throat. 

It was harder than it should have been, to act like everything was normal. Everything _should_ have been normal. _“Think of the bigger picture- the world.”_ He could hear The Mage’s voice in his head. 

The big picture. There was a war, there was something threatening magick, Simon Snow was the most powerful mage in the world (whether or not he had anyone to prove it to), and he was at Watford, like he always either was or was wishing to be. So really, nothing had changed. Just a moment, a stupid decision. 

He held onto the thought, tried to let it rush over him. Everything was normal- as normal as it ever was. His chest was tight and hammering, but what was more familiar than a racing heart and frantic blood? 

He caught his fingertips on his lips, and pushed them away like he’d been shocked. 

At least here, he could be alone. At least here, everything felt like it had stayed the same. 

\-------- 

Simon was stiff when he finally stood up. He’d sat against the door so long that he’d fallen into a trance that wasn’t quite asleep and wasn’t exactly awake either. His shoulder popped, and he rubbed at his eyes. 

He didn’t know how long it had been. Long enough for his stomach to be complaining again. At least an hour. 

He felt heat on his face. He was hiding in the bathroom, of his own room. Simon Snow, the foretold Chosen One, stuck in his room in the middle of a crisis, hiding next to a toilet. He splashed some water on his face and tried to get a grip. 

His hand paused on the doorknob, suddenly scared of what he would see beyond it. Simon scowled at himself (well, at the door, technically). 

What was he expecting to see? Baz, perched menacingly, waiting for Simon with his fangs out? Baz with his wand in his hand and his cruelest expression on? Baz, on the floor? 

He opened the door so quickly he knocked the edge into himself. His eyes fell on Baz immediately. He was. Well, just Baz. 

Simon sat on his bed, turning himself away from the other side of the room. A few minutes later, he heard Baz’s feet on the ground, and him close the bathroom door. 

He took a breath, then another when it didn’t do much. 

Get a hold of yourself, he thought. And when Baz came back into the room, Simon didn’t even look up. 

Lunch came sooner than Simon had expected (he tried not to think about how long that meant he had really spent in the bathroom), and the day moved by at what seemed to be as agonizingly slow as possible. At least he was getting some solid studying in. 

He’d spent so long reading his Elocution textbook, and taking notes, that he thought he could probably get a crowd cheering with an **On your feet** by now. Of course, he had no way of testing that theory, unless he meant to cast it on the only other person in the room. Which would be a might bit hard to manage without acting like he existed. 

Simon had done well with keeping the promise to himself- to act normal, to not stare at and worry about things he couldn’t fix. And it seemed like Baz was keeping his side of the unspoken bargain as well. He still hadn’t heard him say a single word. Even when it was time to get lunch, he’d simply gotten up and left without saying a thing about it. 

His eyes were going bleary with the strain of so many words and pages, and his head felt heavy and unfocused. It was a relief when the light came, signalling it was time for dinner. Simon ran to it, and then to the door, not worrying a bit what he looked like. 

Even walking as slowly as he could, the reprieve was over too soon. He found himself hesitating in the doorway, hands weighed down with plates. His head was still swimming, vaguely repeating phrases and words he’d read, floating images behind his eyes in no clear order- the home he’d spent the summer at, Penny waiting for him at breakfast, Baz striding across the grounds towards him when the crucible cast them. 

When he was settled on the bed, plate in his lap, it was all too clear that his brain was done cooperating. He didn’t think he could read another sentence if it would save his life. He tried his best to focus on the food. The peas were big and such a bright green he wondered if they’d been magicked that way, and the cuts of beef were thick and smoky. He closed his eyes as he ate them, trying to take in each of the flavors. 

Eventually he had to open his eyes again, and there was no fighting where they would settle. His eyes were too used to following Baz, trained to see him wherever he was. It was a habit they weren’t keen on breaking, no matter how much Simon fought against it. 

He raised the fork to his lips, and the cold feeling of it made his heart stutter. 

Baz, against the Manhattan skyline. Baz, tasting of fire and something sweet. Cold, raw Baz, who’d leaned into him when he’d pulled away. 

His stomach lurched. 

He didn’t want to think about it. Above everything else, he didn’t want to think about _that_. 

But it was hard not to wonder, now that the thought had crept its way into his head, if Baz was thinking about it too. 

Simon felt something heavy drop in his gut. Maybe that was it all along. 

Not sickness, not something that came with being a vampire, just disgust. Maybe that was why he wouldn’t look at him, or speak to him. He looked like a wreck, sitting still like it was taking all his effort to. He would have hated to see what Baz would do, if he let himself. 

Or, some small part of him persisted, maybe it’s not what you did, it’s what you’re _doing_. He shook his head violently. That was a dead end road too far out of possibility to even let himself think about. And thank magick for that, anyway- because where exactly was he supposed to _want_ it to lead. 

His breath felt stale in his mouth, like he’d forgotten to breathe all day, was only breathing the same air in and out since he’d woken up. He thought he remembered something about not being able to breathe in air you already breathed out, like it would kill you, or suffocate you. Maybe that was it. No air to his brain. 

He leaned back on his bed, trying to pretend he was somewhere, anywhere else. Fighting the chimera again would have been preferable. 

Breaking quarantine was getting too tempting. Who would stop him? If he burst out of Mummer’s and, what? Found The Humdrum. Found The Mage. Found Penny. Aleister Crowley he missed Penny- and she was still on the same grounds as he was. He could walk to her right now, if he wanted to risk it. Maybe the virus wouldn’t even do anything to him. He had enough magick to never run out the way other magicians did, maybe he could fight this too. 

He rolled over, face crushed against the crumpled comforter. He wasn’t leaving. But it was nice, to pretend he could. It was nice to pretend he had any control at all. 

He missed the regular fights.Where he had a sword and his shoddy magick and nothing could touch him, or touch him enough to bring him down. The worst part of those was that there was always someone caught in the middle- but now, _everyone_ was caught in the middle. 

A sword to a troll. A desperate spell shot at a dragon. His hands alone, against Baz. Crowley, he wished he were just _fighting_ Baz. Then whatever he threw at him, or lured him into, Simon at least knew what was coming, knew what to do, knew the goal. 

Maybe he was still luring him. Maybe this was the next level of his plot to get inside his head. Well, _more_ inside his head. 

Simon sighed into his mattress. Too hard to think about it. 

And the worst part was, that was all there was left to do. Think. He was going crazy, thinking so much. Thinking himself into a knot, into exhaustion, into feelings. You could talk yourself into anything, if you needed a big enough distraction. 

He ripped the skin off his bottom lip, worrying away at it. The bathroom door slammed shut, and he sat himself up, slowly. 

He blinked at the sight of Baz, an unexpected figure in front of him. He must have gotten up too quietly for Simon to notice, and now he was standing in front of the door, pointedly staring over Simon’s head, looking like he might throw something, or run at him, or just walk straight out of their room. 

Something in Simon’s stomach shrivelled. He felt a bit like he’d run into a standing stone, an electric kind of primal blow against his body. 

He watched Baz walk across the room, past him, without lingering. Simon’s eyes got stuck at that halfway point between their beds, feeling, or imagining, Baz’s eyes skating past him. He set his attention back to his plate, which had cooled off sadly. He wished he had Penny there, to waste magick on him. 

He managed nearly half the plate, but the nausea had only gotten worse, and at the end he had to put it aside. He thought he saw Baz watch him do it, eyebrow raised, but it must have been his imagination, because when he looked over Baz was looking away just as fervently. 

He crawled under his covers when the sky was still the color of a bruise, not quite committed to full darkness, still in his uniform, refusing to look back up at the other side of the room. Any relief he would have felt at the day ending was canceled out with the knowledge that the next day would be the same. Another day of tension and caring too much because he had nothing better to do. 

He clenched his jaw, and forced himself to sleep. 

\------ 

He woke up with a gasp, feeling like he was floating. The night air was hitting him everywhere his blankets had fallen away, and the sadness from a dream he couldn’t remember was stuck to him like he was choking. 

For a moment, he could have been anywhere- lost in the wilderness somewhere, having dreamt his life until this point. Then he turned his head, and the moonlight showed the outline of another bed. 

“Baz?” His voice sounded like a stranger’s. 

The silence stretched on, long enough for his chest to ache, and then he heard someone take a breath. 

“I’m here, Snow.” 

His voice was so quiet, it was almost too hard to hear under the wind, and so gentle it hurt. Simon closed his eyes, muscles relaxing one by one, and fell back to sleep. 


	6. Chapter 6

For the first time in a long time, Simon Snow slept through the night, and for the first time in even longer, he woke far after the sun had already risen. His body was finally readjusting, embracing the new schedule. He stretched his arms out above his head, then let them drop back down to the mattress. 

There was a weight on him still, something pushing at him, asking and demanding answers, but it was easier than it should have been to just ignore it. Lock it in a box and throw it on the back shelf. 

The bathroom door opened, a faint amount of steam escaping with it, and Baz appeared in the doorway. Simon felt something in his stomach drop at the sight of him. He wasn’t sure if it was the dangerously dark bags, or just Baz himself. Maybe both, at this point. 

Baz moved around the room, putting his clothes away, remaking his bed, doing all the things he’d done every morning of the past seven years. It made Simon smile to think of it. 

His face caught the light, and Simon tried not to over react. He looked worse than he had even the night before. There were creases on him like he needed someone to take an iron to his whole body, and his eyes were dusty. Baz turned his face a little more towards Simon, then ducked away, narrowly avoiding his eyes. 

Simon didn’t drop his own. He was watching the dull shine of him, and wondering where it had come from, and how long it would stay. Baz almost met his eyes twice more, like he’d been trying to look but Simon had beaten him to it. 

Simon tugged on his comforter, spinning it around his fist absent-mindedly. The swooping feeling in him, forcing him to look at the questions, rose up again. 

He was feeling haunted, by the dreams he’d had the night before. He could only remember them in disjointed, ending-less pieces, each one trying to stack on top of the other, block the rest from rising above. There was a bitterness there, something trying to break through and infect him with every bad feeling that was waiting to be felt, only temporarily held at bay, but along with it, was the simple questioning. Like the questions children ask, just for the knowing, for the ability to know how to see the world. 

How did he feel? Why did he feel it? What did Baz feel? Was he right, to think Baz might feel just as confused- to feel like he’d been waiting? And then, waiting for _what_? Where was any of this supposed to go? _How_ did he _feel_? Exactly? 

But did it matter? The thought was a bit of a revelation. 

Did it matter, really, why he was staring? Whether it was because he was scared, or bored, or something else entirely? Baz had always taken up too much space in his head, this was hardly different. He had always watched him, challenged him to watch back. Did it matter, even, why he had kissed him? 

His teeth grazed his bottom lip, and he let out a breath. He could feel pressure on them like the last day, last two nights, had never happened, had been an elaborate daydream in the middle of that kiss. 

All that mattered, he thought, was that he wanted to kiss him again. 

Because Simon wasn’t sure of much, but he was sure of that. No matter how much he'd tried to stop himself thinking about it, or tried to talk himself out of it, there was no denying how close he was, even now, to trying to do it again. 

Baz turned, and Simon kept his eyes down, lingering instead on the wall across from him, to let Baz do whatever he was trying to do- watch him, glare all the aggression out of his body, aim a spell at him. He raised his eyes again, when he couldn’t stand it, and saw a blankness fall over the other boy’s face before he could see what it was covering. 

The disappointment lingered, as he got out of bed, and he pushed it away as best he could, grabbing one of his dirty uniforms. With the wardrobe empty there weren’t many options for clothes. Other than the ones he’d come in months ago, and he was determined to not have to put those back on until the semester ended. Or he had to leave Watford. Whatever came first, he thought grimly. 

Simon pointed his wand at the uniform and took in a deep breath. He felt his magick under his skin, but there was no telling if it was going to cooperate. 

Just work with me, Simon said to it silently. I know you don’t want to work together when it comes to trolls or the bloody Humdrum and saving my life, but _please_ , in magick’s name, can I have some clean trousers? 

He squared his shoulders, thought of his elocution notes. The trick, it had said, was hitting the right word, with the right intention. 

Simon’s hand gripped his wand a little tighter. 

“ ** _Clean as a whistle!_** ” He said, hitting the first word with all the force he could muster. 

Two things happened, simultaneously. First, his clothing writhed like invisible hands were scrubbing it within an inch of its life, leaving it so frayed he thought it might fall apart with any prodding. Second, a circle appeared on the floor, like a well worn groove. It shined like it the target of heavy and obsessive waxing. Simon stepped on it curiously without thinking it through, and had to grab the bedpost at the last second to stop himself from crashing to the ground. 

He heard Baz snort. 

He looked a little more like himself, when Simon saw him sitting there, a laugh playing at his lips, eyebrows quirked. His eyes didn’t flinch away immediately, and Simon’s met his, smiling a little- at him looking, at him looking less like he was about to die, at the absurdity of all of this. Then Baz ducked his head back down, like a wall raising up. 

Simon put the clothes on anyway, thread be damned. Anyway, distressed was a fashion style, right? 

***********************************************************************************************************************************

When the light appeared that afternoon, hovering in between their two beds, Simon got up automatically. Baz was in the middle of doing the same when he froze, mid-motion. 

Baz hadn’t looked back up since the cleaning incident, over an hour ago, or moved a muscle- that Simon had managed to catch at least. (And all Simon had managed to do, no distraction good enough to hold his attention at this point, was watch Baz, so really he should have known.) 

He looked like he needed to be re-inflated, or rolled back out. Every inch of him was stiff and folded, neck looking like it was stuck craned downwards. 

Simon shifted his weight from one foot to the other. 

“Did you wanna?” 

Baz looked up, warily. He didn’t answer. 

“Get- Get the food, I mean,” Simon stammered. 

Baz lifted an eyebrow, and the usually cool gesture looked like it took every muscle in his body. 

“Or I could,” Simon said. “If you don’t. Want to. I don’t mind.” 

Baz’s expression turned even more quizzical, and a bit suspicious. “What are you talking about, Snow?” 

The sound of his voice caused a small swell of something like victory in Simon’s chest, but it wasn’t a good sound. It sounded musty from disuse, as cramped and thin as the rest of him. 

“I just thought-” Simon said, and cursed at himself when he felt his face heat up. He dragged his eyes away from Baz out of sheer self-preservation. “I just thought you might want to. Uh. Stretch your legs.” 

Baz was silent, and Simon’s eyes darted back to him. 

Baz cleared his throat. 

“Fine.” He sounded suspicious, and guarded. But when he walked out of the room, there was a feeling to him, like he was secretly relieved. Of what, Simon couldn’t be sure. 

The room was quiet without Baz in it, and inarguably _too_ quiet- a different quiet than the silence Baz was creating. Emptier. 

When he opened the door again, plates in his hands, butter thrust out of his pocket, Simon found it impossible not to smile. He bit his cheek, trying to reign it in a bit. It really only amounted to a sore cheek. 

It was strange, to see him and immediately want to smile, instead of scowl, but it was less strange than he would have expected. This wasn’t what he thought things would be like, but none of it was, so what did it matter? 

Baz shielded his plate, and faced himself away from Simon, like Simon had grown to expect. It still made him curious, the oddness of it, but he was too tired of questions for even that one, questions with answers that he might never get. 

He ate, because there was food and that was what you did, but he barely even noticed that he was doing it. His head was stuck in a loop, of memory to dreams to his own heart beating in his chest, slightly too fast. 

When Baz put his plate aside, angling himself towards his desk instead of the wall, Simon stood up, took a step forward. He hardly even thought about it, more like he was being guided than actually guiding his body. 

Baz wasn’t looking at him, in the kind of way that made Simon feel like it was on purpose. He lingered in front of Baz’s bed until the other boy raised his eyes to meet his. 

“What are you doing, Snow?” 

He sounded exhausted and jittery. Nervous, Simon thought, and the idea of it made him feel off, out of his depth, farther than he’d ever been. 

“Change of scenery?” Simon suggested. He kept Baz’s gaze, waited for him to say something, or hiss at him to leave. He didn’t. 

Simon sat down. 

Baz made a face at him, a scrunched, defensive thing. 

There was an odd silence between them for a handful of seconds, as Simon tried to get his thoughts in order. 

“Do you talk to Cook Pritchard?” He asked. 

Baz looked like that was the last sentence he’d expected out of Simon’s mouth. Or maybe his brain was too preoccupied trying to come up with the perfect spell to fire at him. 

“What? Why?” 

“I mean, when you pick up the meals,” Simon said. 

Baz shot him a suspicious look, like he was trying to figure out what answer Simon wanted, and how to give him the opposite. 

“I just mean, if I were you,” Simon continued with a shrug, trying to keep his tone casual. “and I had family here, I would want to. Y’know. She’s your... cousin? Isn’t she?” 

Baz held on to the look for a little longer, then shook his head, like this line of questioning was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. 

“Why would Cook Pritchard even be here? In our building?” 

“Dunno,” Simon shrugged again, ears hot. 

“Why are you asking?” Baz sounded truly annoyed. 

“I just- I-” Simon bit his lip. “I dunno,” He repeated. “I just wanted to- I thought you’d be doing things. When you leave the room. I mean. You’re always back faster than I expect you to be.” 

“Because I can’t stand to be away from you,” Baz sneered, sarcasm dripping off his words. “I run there and back, just for you, Snow.” 

Simon glared at him, face hot. He was regretting it, all of it. And Baz was looking at him like he was a piece of meat, to roast. Maybe he was completely wrong. 

His hammering heart wanted him off the bed. But the desire to be there, even with Baz snarling, was stronger. 

“Okay.” 

“Okay?” Baz repeated, still sarcastic, but less acidic. 

“Okay,” Simon said again, like that settled it. 

The air between them felt less like it was about to ignite a full out fight, but Simon still felt uncertain. He snuck a glance at Baz’s face. He looked like he was bracing himself for something. Like he was holding back. He looked really, truly nervous. 

He was looking away from him, eyes pointed, Simon guessed, at wherever Simon _wasn’t_. At the moment, they were on Simon’s desk, and his half-empty plate. 

Simon thought of something, and opened his mouth before he could think, again, of how stupid this all was. If he tried to stop him from saying anything stupid he’d probably just never speak. Definitely not be having the conversation. Whatever this conversation even was. 

“Why did you bring the butter?” 

Baz looked up, confusion written across his face. “What?” 

Simon was still staring at the plate. “Why did you go out of your way to bring me all that butter?” 

He flushed, at how inane it sounded. And wasn’t it just like him, to read too far into Baz’s actions, and to think far too much about food. 

He saw Baz raise an eyebrow. 

“Why are you sitting on my bed, asking me about butter?” Simon didn’t answer, and after a few moments Baz sighed. “Aliester Crowley, Snow, it’s just butter. I’ve lived with you for 7 years, I know you’re an absolute glutton. First year you used to eat butter with a spoon.” 

Simon looked at him, surprised. 

“How did you know that?” 

Baz’s eyebrow raised ever higher. “We go to school together, Snow.” 

Simon shook his head. 

“You were watching?” He asked. “First year?” 

Baz shrugged, a guarded look on his face. 

“Know your enemy,” He half-mumbled. 

“At breakfast?” 

“You did it at tea too,” Baz corrected him, looking uncomfortable, and looking very determinedly away from Simon. 

Simon felt a smile at his mouth, at his next thought, and fought to keep it down. 

“You were watching,” Simon said, still trying to hold the ridiculous smile in. Convince himself he was insane. “And you remembered.” 

Baz sighed again, deeper this time. His eyes looked like he was fighting against something in his head, or silently yelling in it. They were locked on Simon’s, narrowed like he was trying to read him. And under it all, there was something, something so achingly honest Simon wasn’t sure if it was there at all, or if he’d dreamed it into being. 

He laughed, like it hurt him. 

And he didn’t have to say anything, but instead he said “It’s just butter, Snow,” and breathed it like it was a confession or a prayer, or a denial past the point of denying. 

It was funny how the words you wanted to hear the most, were never the ones you were expecting them to be. 

Simon leaned in to him, heart racing, and slowed to a stop within an inch of Baz’s face. He could hear him take in a shaky breath, saw his eyes darting from Simon’s to his mouth. He looked sick, in a new way, like he was about to tear himself apart. 

Simon took a breath, waiting, like he was asking a question- the only question that mattered now. And Baz let his eyes close, body relaxing as he let go, and leaned into him, as if he were answering _yes, yes, yes_. 

Simon’s mouth was impatient, too full of wanting, and he kissed hard, before Baz had done a thing but let them touch. But it wasn’t long before Baz’s lips began to move, and Simon was caught in the relief and the joy of knowing _he was kissing him back_. 

He felt Baz’s hands ghost past his skin, like cold air rippling over his shoulders, his neck. His fingers brushed his body like he was touching something breakable, or rare. Like he was surprised he was allowed to touch it at all- or thought he couldn’t, and this was him getting away with something. Simon felt him barely cup his cheek, move down his back, never quite certain enough to let himself fully touch. 

Baz edged himself closer- carefully, but like he was doing all he could to keep it that way- moving in like he was trying to eliminate any space between them, and Simon felt it too, like a jolt of electricity coursing through him, pushing them tooth to tooth, lips to lips, any awkwardness or hesitation gone in the need for closeness. 

Baz’s hands appeared again, no doubt or hesitation tethering them this time, touching Simon’s jaw, his neck, fingers running through his hair. Simon let out a growl, and leaned in closer, pushed him until they were both lying in the bed, Simon above him, a hair’s breadth separating them. 

Baz lifted his head, and kissed him. 

Baz’s mouth was desperate. The gentleness of the last kiss was there, somewhere, but it was buried underneath an urgency, like this moment could end at any second, and he was determined to do everything he’d ever wanted to before it could. 

His arms wrapped around Simon’s neck, and pulled him back down until there was no separating them. 

It felt like the crucible casting them all over again- the feeling in his stomach, pulling and leading always, always leading to Baz. It felt like this was the end goal the entire time. Here, now. His body, on Baz’s, with nothing between them, nothing to wonder. Just this, holding on to each other like there was nothing else solid in the world. 

Simon explored his mouth, high on the adrenaline, on the feeling of it. This, was better than any kissing he’d done before. This was better than any _fight_ he’d ever fought. If he could spend every moment, of every day like this- body warming Baz’s, Baz making those sounds in his throat, mouth almost numb... The idea of being trapped here until who knew when didn’t sound like a problem anymore. Not if they could spend it like this. 

Baz was kissing his jaw, working his way down his neck, and Simon’s brain was as quiet as it had ever been before, full of nothing but his heartbeat, and the feeling of Baz pressing into him. 

Baz paused, and Simon took his face in his hands, and brought him back to his mouth. He bit down on Baz’s lower lip, and was rewarded by a sweet, primal sound in his throat. 

This. Simon’s mouth slipped off of Baz’s, tracing his widow’s peak. His body felt like it was buzzing, shaking. He felt like he was floating. This. Was what it was like, when he wasn’t stuck in his head. When he wasn’t running in circles. When he wasn’t asking, but answering. _This_ felt like finally, finally, doing something. Solving something. 

Simon woke up in the dark, mind sleepily withholding details until they came with physical touch. Baz’s hair on his cheek. Baz’s legs’ intertwined with his legs. Baz’s breathing matching his own. 

He pressed his face into the pillow, because it smelled like Baz, and because it was easier than pinching himself and it proved that this wasn’t just a dream. 

***********************************************************************************************************************************

There was a lightness in his chest, an impossible grin making his face hurt (though that might have been Baz’s fault somewhat too). He took in an easy breath, leaned himself further into Baz’s body just because he could. 

Simon found the piece of Baz closest to him with nothing in the way, and kissed him right below his sleeve. Then he carefully unknotted them, trying not to wake Baz, who looked like he needed sleep more than anyone else in the world did, and looked too close to opening his eyes already. 

The sleeve of his shirt fell off when he righted himself, and he made a fist around it as it fell into his left palm. He did his best to muffle a laugh. 

That was a low cost, for the night he’d had. 

He climbed into his own bed, hot and smelling like bergamot and smoke. He was asleep again almost before his eyes closed, diving into a night’s worth of memories replaying. 


	7. Chapter 7

Simon woke up slow, to the blaring sun and a copper taste in his mouth from where his tongue was pressed into his lip, right where his teeth had scraped it. His mouth felt a bit like a bruise, and he was still wearing his torn uniform, and he couldn’t seem to stop smiling. 

He was too stupidly happy to do anything but lay there, arms over his face, keeping everything else at bay. He was watching it play out in his mind again, trying not to tear it apart, prove it a dream. Baz’s hands, pulling at his hair, pulling him closer. Baz looking up at him like he couldn’t believe it. Simon still couldn’t. 

Last night, Baz had kissed the mole on his neck like it was his life goal, finally realized, and held him like he was something he couldn’t bear to let go. 

Simon pressed his hands to his burning face, and let out a long breath. Not a dream, he promised himself. He could never have dreamt it, wouldn’t have known how to. 

He sat up, and paused, smiling even wider, when he saw Baz. He was sitting on his bed, hands on his knees, feet on the floor, looking lost somewhere in his mind. 

Simon took in the sight of him, stuck in a daydream or lost in thought. 

“Hey.” 

Baz jumped. His brows knit together, like he’d been snuck up on. He looked at Simon, quick, an expression moving past his face too fast to pinpoint, then looked away again. 

Simon felt his smile fade, just a little. 

Baz didn’t look like... Well, he didn’t look the way Simon had thought he would. Didn’t look anything like he’d looked last night. It was too much like days ago- Crowley, only _days_ ago? It felt like weeks. Months. 

He looked like he was expecting an attack. 

Simon thought of his on edge expression when he’d sat on his bed the night before, the nerves pushing at him, and softened a bit. 

“Good morning,” Simon tried. 

Baz made a motion like he was going to look at him, but changed his mind at the last second. 

“Did you, uh....” ‘Sleep well’ sounded stupid. Or soft. “Are you cold?” 

The sun had moved underneath a cloud, and the air coming from the window was cooler than it had been. Baz shivered, or shuddered, but shook his head rigidly. 

“I kind of am,” Simon said, for something to say. 

Baz acted like he hadn’t heard him at all. 

Simon looked at him, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do. How to have a normal conversation. 

It occurred to him, that they had never had one before. Still hadn’t, actually, because this certainly didn’t count. 

It was easy to talk when you were shouting, or when all you needed was the right word to make the other person pull a punch. Especially when “the right word” was really just _any_ word, as long as they were outside, away from the anathema and the eyes of anyone who might stop them. 

It was harder, to exchange pleasantries like they were strangers. 

And Merlin, they weren’t. Even before this, it would have been impossible not to _know_ him, but now... 

Simon felt himself smile again. 

Maybe it was okay, to sound a bit soft. Maybe they deserved that. 

“Hey,” Simon said again, letting his voice drop closer to a whisper. He saw Baz’s eyes flicker over to his. “Are you okay?” 

Baz closed his eyes, less like a statement, and more like shutting down completely. 

“I mean it, Baz,” Simon pressed, voice still gentle, real worry showing through even as he tried to keep it down. “What’s wrong?” 

Baz didn’t look up, or even open his eyes. He looked like a statue, a cursed prince in a fairy tale. 

Simon lowered his legs to the ground, and stood up. He took a step towards Baz. 

Baz’s eyes snapped open at the sound of his feet on the floor. He recoiled like he’d just been hit. Simon stopped so quickly he fell back a step. 

The look on his face was too familiar. Familiar like it was something from another life, somehow finding its way to him. His defenses were up, and he looked like a sharpened weapon, calculating where best to strike. His lips were curled. 

“ _What_ is your problem?” Simon shouted. He didn’t sound soft this time. He spit the words out like they were bitter poisons. 

“My _problem_?” Baz shot back. His voice had a layer of dust over it, like it was still warming up. Simon would have smiled at it, if Baz wasn’t using it like a hot poker. “Hmm. What _exactly_ could be my problem?” 

“What?” Simon asked, bewildered and upset. 

“Well, first of all,” Baz said, standing up suddenly. “my idiot roommate can’t seem to leave me alone.” 

“I- you- It isn’t- We-” Simon blustered, and Baz cut him off again before he could make the words come out. 

“It isn’t your _business_ , Snow,” Baz snarled. He took a step backwards so that he was pressed up against his bed, like he couldn’t stand to be that close, even, to Simon. “what my ‘ _problem’_ is. You think suddenly, you’re, what?” 

Simon pushed through, speaking around a clenched jaw. It was hard to catch his breath. “I just thought. I’ve noticed. Something’s wrong, and I wanted to. To. Help.” 

Baz laughed, and it was the worst noise Simon had ever heard. 

“Help,” He repeated, like it was ridiculous. “I’ve seen your _help_ , thanks. You’re worried, Snow?” His eyes flashed. “And you really thought what I needed was for my roommate to crawl into bed with me? You can’t-” Baz was shaking, like he’d lost control of his body. He spat the words out again. “ _You can’t_ always be the hero. You don’t get to have whatever you want, whatever happy ending _you want_ in the moment. You don’t get to get _lonely_ ,” He took a step towards him. _“_ and _bored_ and then assume-” 

“Assume what?” Simon demanded over him, even though not a single part of him wanted the answer, not out loud. 

Baz was breathing so fast he looked like he was going to rise right off of the ground. He dropped back onto the bed, instead, and went back to pretending Simon didn’t exist. 

Simon stayed frozen in the space between their beds. His heart was pounding, loud enough that it was impossible to ignore, hard enough that his body was beginning to ache. He wanted to kick something. He wanted to throw up. 

He looked towards the bathroom for a moment, desperate for some semblance of being alone, but the thought of it made him frustrated. He’d been hiding in the bathroom too much. He’d been _hiding_ too much. 

He sat at his desk and tried to pretend that Baz wasn’t across the room from him. Tried to pretend he hadn’t woken up as happy as he’d ever been in his life- that, too, felt like a dream. Felt like a joke, a bad, cruel joke, one that he’d played on _himself_. 

He did his best not to think about it- any of it- but his best was less than it used to be. His chest still hurt, and his head did too. Every time he tricked himself into getting distracted Baz made some angry noise, or threw himself into a different position on his bed, or started to pace- because he was, very inconveniently, pacing again. 

Every time he came close enough to nearly pass by Simon (which was always carefully curbed), Simon had the urge to throw something at him. It was hard to look at him. 

Simon got back into his bed, curling towards the wall. 

Everything good he’d been feeling was curdling in him, from his anger or Baz’s, or the rough combination of the two. He wanted to scrub away the evidence of it being there at all. Wanted to forget that anything had happened, that he’d ever thought the fight was over. 

But underneath the pained desire to throw it all away, to simplify Baz and his life and go back to knowing the answers he was supposed to know, was a sore part of him, asking. 

Lonely. He’d said he was just lonely. And it made Simon want to scream. Bite. Shake Baz by the shoulders. 

But why should it? Wasn’t that what he’d been saying to himself all along- too lonely, too far gone, too desperate to feel something other than bored and unsure? And this was a good cure for it, it had gotten the job done. 

He growled into his pillow. 

But that didn’t feel true. Not the whole truth, at least. 

Lonely. He _was_ lonely. He missed life outside of this room, missed people outside of this room. But he knew, he could feel, that that was only a part of it, and whatever was past that easy answer was too big for him to take in right now. He was too close to falling apart. Too close to jumping out of the window, or setting them both on fire. 

Because, what did it mean? If he’d been lying? Withholding? Simon remembered his heart pounding when he looked at Baz’s mouth, the wanting that came with it. What would it have meant, if it wasn’t now, where it felt like time wasn’t moving, and the world didn’t exist in any way that could touch them? Or would it have happened at all? 

He was stuck on the question, desperately orbiting it, even as he struggled to find something else to think about. Time moved on without him as he got more and more lost inside his head, leaving him lying face down in the bed and dead to the world. 

He heard Baz get up again, and looked up to see the light in the middle of the room, barely even shining yet, and Baz disappearing behind the door. 

Simon went into the bathroom, splashed some water in his face, and ignored the sight of his reflection, creased with indentations from his pillow, and hair sticking up from manhandling. He sat back on his bed, bracing himself for Baz’s reappearance. 

Time was hard to hold on to, with barely any schedule. If it weren’t for the sun out the window, and the rotating meals, it would have been easy to think the week had been a never ending day. But even with that murkiness, Simon knew Baz had been gone longer than normal. 

Maybe he really _was_ talking to Cook Pritchard, he thought. He’d never really answered the question. It was possible. Besides the fact that that didn’t really feel plausible, at this point at least. 

An image came into his mind, unbidden, of Baz walking out the front door. Leaving and not coming back. 

Wouldn’t that be ironic, Simon couldn’t help but think. After he nearly tore my head off for the same thing. 

But as time stretched on, the thought came back. Baz, opening the front door and leaving the building with no one to stop him. Baz, maybe already sick. Who would even know, if he was lying outside, with no voice to call for help? 

Simon was already on his feet and halfway to the door when it swung open again. A wave of relief hit him, and he sighed, feeling the tension in him fall away. 

Baz was watching him with as little expression as possible. He moved around Simon. 

Simon turned to look at him as he put the plates down, and saw him pause, hand on something white. He narrowed his eyes at it, hesitating, then looked up, and thrust it at Simon. Simon caught it on instinct. 

He kept his eyes on Baz for another moment, waiting for some explanation, but Baz only dropped his gaze and moved away from him. 

It was a paper, covered in black writing. His first thought was that it was from The Mage, and he straightened up at the possibility, eyes scanning the lines for information, or a task. But The Mage had other ways of getting him messages. And the writing was nothing like his precise penmanship. 

His heart sped up when he recognized Penny’s handwriting. 

_“Simon,_

_I hope you’re not driving yourself mad. I keep picturing you scaling the wall from your window, or beheading Baz. Don’t kill Baz- the anathema is the anathema whether Watford is open or not, Simon. The only thing worse than being stuck at Watford would be_ not _being at Watford._

_Nicks and Slicks, I miss you, Simon. I meant to say that first. But I’m also worried, so don’t do anything to make me worry more. Please._

_You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to get this message to you! I’ve been trying since day 1. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do it again any time soon, I only just got the timing right, and that was mostly luck. I’m fine, by the way. Trixie has barely shut up all week, but I’m getting better at blocking it out._

_Anyway, Simon. I don’t know how much The Mage has told you, but my mum got word through to me a few days ago and it’s not looking good. She said there are more cases than anyone knew about, and so far it’s only spreading and not slowing down. They keep saying it’ll hit a peak and then we’ll come out the other side, but no one seems to know when that’s supposed to be. The research they’ve been doing is phenomenal, but it isn’t getting them any closer to a cure they can work with. And not a single person who’s caught it has gotten their voice back. I’m scared, Simon. And I miss you. I really do._

_I wish I could tell you I’ve got a plan, but I don’t. I just wish I could talk to you, for real I mean, and then I’d feel a little less like it’s the end of the world._

_Just stay safe. For me, if you won’t do it for yourself. We both know you’ve got no proper self preservation instinct. If anything else happens, just lock the doors and wait it out. Tell the humdrum to bugger off. Just make sure that you’re still here when all this is over._

  * _Penny”_



The weight of missing Penny weighed down on him. He could hear the letter in her voice, and it only made him want to hear her voice in person even more. 

He could feel Baz looking at him, and he realized he had tears in his eyes. He wiped at them hastily, then tucked the letter away into his pocket, without looking over at him. 

“Well,” Baz said, after a few seconds, tone close to an uncaring drawl. “What did Bunce want?” 

“How do you know it was Penelope?” Simon asked, still turned away. 

“Who _else_ would be writing to you?” It sounded like an insult at first, but there was a hint of something mixed in. 

Simon looked up at him, finally, and caught the bothered angle of his mouth. Jealous. 

It made Simon’s heart stutter, while also rushing him with annoyance. Now who was _assuming-_ He cut the thought off, shaking his head. 

“Penelope,” Simon said carefully, and saw Baz relax, barely noticeably. “says she’s fine. But...” Simon frowned, not even wanting to think about it. “Her mum says things are getting bad out there. Worse, I mean. It’s spreading a lot.” 

“And the cure?” Baz asked, still overly casual. 

Simon shook his head again. 

“As long as we stay inside,” Simon said, mostly to himself. “and we listen to The Mage, we’ll be fine. And then we can be done with all of this.” A thought struck him. “Penny better not have gone outside to get this note to me.” 

He thought of her wording- ‘Got the timing right’. For what? Were there patrols? He imagined Penny sneaking past them. Stupidly dangerous. 

“I doubt it,” Baz said. 

“How do you know?” Simon shot back, nerves turning him combustible. 

“Because,” Baz answered, like it was obvious. “Bunce is too smart not to use a spell whenever there’s a spell worth using.” 

That was true, at least. 

Simon let out a sigh. “I can’t wait for this to be over. Then she can just talk to me in person, instead of doing Merlin knows what. And everything will be back to normal, so we can just work together.” 

He leaned his palms into his eyes. 

“When this is over with maybe everyone will be able to see the big picture, and we can _all_ work together. Or we can start fighting again, if we have to, that’ll at least feel normal.” 

Baz made a noise. 

Simon dropped his hands and looked at him. 

“What? Is working together such a-” 

“You’re acting like this isn’t real life,” Baz said. 

“What?” 

“You’re acting,” Baz said again, and the force from this morning was back. “like none of this is real. Like it’s just a break in between your actual life.” 

Simon was silent. Wasn’t it? 

“It’ll change things, or it won’t, and it doesn’t really matter to you, does it?” Baz asked. “Because you want to put this whole thing behind you and forget it ever happened, like some fever dream. You don’t want this to be real. You’re just dying to move on, to your real life.” 

He locked eyes with Simon, who was still staring at him, completely bewildered, with no idea what he was supposed to say. 

“Aren’t you?” Baz demanded. 

“I- I guess.” 

This only seemed to make Baz more upset. He stormed away, towards the door. Then stopped, when he seemed to remember he wasn’t supposed to leave. His hand twitched, like he was considering doing it anyway. 

“Baz,” Simon said, raising his voice, still trying to understand what was happening. “What are you talking about?” 

Baz turned to face him again, mouth a thin line. 

Simon huffed. “What do you want me to _say_ , Baz?” 

“Nothing,” Baz answered, acidically. 

“Really? Because this feels like-” Simon huffed again. “This feels like the stupidest fight we’ve ever had. Tell me what we’re arguing about, at least.” 

“We’re not.” Baz walked towards his bed. 

“We are,” Simon persisted. “I just have no idea why. I have no idea why we’re _fighting_ , or why you’re acting like-” 

Baz scowled, taking two fast steps towards him until they were directly in front of each other. 

He opened his mouth, like he was about to yell at him, but no words came out. He just stared, and Simon met his eyes without hesitation. 

“This,” Baz said, finally. “isn’t the same for me, as it is for you.” 

Simon felt his heart fall. 

“Okay,” He forced out, and it only made Baz look more desperate. 

“Simon,” He said, and he let go of a breath, like he was preparing to jump off a cliff, give himself up to the universe. His hands twitched, raised up just slightly in the air, like something was stopping them from breaking through. “This _is_ my real life.” 

Simon opened his mouth, “Qu-” 

“No, not _quarantine_ , you dolt,” Baz answered before he got the word out, brows furrowed at him, but he looked closer to laughing than tearing him to shreds. He took another breath. “This.” His hands came closer to Simon now, barely touching his arm. “ _This_ , is my... It’s not new, for me. And it’s not because I’m lonely or- or scared.” 

Simon didn’t breathe. 

“I’ve always wanted this.” The words tumbled out of his mouth like they were the only things weighing him down, keeping him on the floor. He looked a little lost without them. “I’ve wanted it for years. And Crowley, it has hurt, and it has nearly been the death of me. And I always knew it probably _would_ be, eventually. But that hasn’t stopped me.” 

“Baz...” 

“And I can’t,” Baz continued, voice louder. “just play house with you and act like any of this is real to you, like it matters. I can’t be your placeholder, for your perfect life, and your perfect girlfriend, and your glorious destiny. I can’t be your choice just because I’m here, and you’ve got nothing better to do.” 

“It isn’t....” Simon started, but he didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He wanted Baz to interrupt him, but he didn’t, only watched him, disappointment deep in his eyes, and looking like he’d expected to be. 

His chest felt too small, for something so big. His mouth couldn’t find its way around the right words, his mind couldn’t get them in the right order, without terrifying him. 

“I have...” Baz swallowed, moving his thin, pale neck. His voice was pained. “I have been absolutely, hopelessly in love with you, Simon Snow, to the point where I don’t think there’s nearly anything you could ask that I’d say no to. You could probably lead me to my death right now and I’d go willingly. But I’m not doing this. I can’t just be your entertainment for the week.” 

And Baz was standing there, looking as vulnerable and sad as if he were bleeding out on the floor, telling Simon he was in love with him, and Simon was so far rooted to the floor he couldn’t do more than stare. At his eyes, and his mouth, and the shape of him, the way he rearranged the world around him as if he were the center of the universe. He was possessed with a feeling that was becoming familiar- and not just because of the last few days, he was realizing slowly, but familiar from years of it, folded into the spitting and sparring. 

He thought of the way he’d ran his fingers through his hair like he was checking it off of a long list written years ago, how he’d pushed him into the bed the same way. And he had no idea when it had started. He had no idea what to call _this_ in any simple terms, words he could speak and have anyone else understand, but it wasn’t new, only newly discovered. 

He wasn’t just lonely. 

He grabbed Baz’s shirt in his fists and pulled him to closer, so they were nearly chest to chest again. They looked each other in the eyes, one set gray, one set blue, and everything felt technicolor. The fabric against his knuckles, the sound of Baz breathing, the heat on his face, all realer than anything else Simon could remember feeling before. 

He closed the gap between them, his turn to answer yes. And for a moment there were no arguments, no distance, no breathing room needed. Just two boys, in a world within themselves. 


	8. Chapter 8

Baz was going through his morning routine, the same one he’d gone through for the past seven years, and Simon was unabashedly watching him do it. Every time Baz caught Simon’s eye he ducked his head again, but it felt different than the days before. More like an inside joke. An admission, on both their parts. 

Simon was staring, at the way Baz pushed his hair back, at the sliver of skin that kept appearing between his shirt and the waistband of his black pants, mainly just because he could. He was allowed to. Without hiding it, or worrying about it, or ruining it by interrogating himself over the act or the feelings that came with it. 

Baz was standing in the light of the window, looking like the sunlight was coming from inside of him. He really was better looking than anyone should have been allowed to be. But it didn’t make Simon annoyed anymore. 

A ripple moved through his body, Baz’s shoulder’s tightening and jumping. His expression caught, like a wall falling in front of it, turning his face white and blank. He closed his eyes. 

The other reason Simon was staring, was because he couldn't ignore how bad Baz looked anymore. He’d had a million wonderful dreams the night before, but in between every one was a creeping fear. 

The worry and the happiness were almost too intertwined for him to separate. It was the same with all his memories of last night. He as revisiting each and every one of them, had been since before he’d opened his eyes. 

The kissing. That had been good. Great, honestly. A relief, to know that it could happen, wasn’t just a fluke he’d have to think about for the rest of his life never knowing the real answer. And the being kissed. That was fantastic. Baz had melted underneath him, following more than leading- definitely not how he would have pictured him kissing- but every so often he leaned into Simon like he was trying to pour the entirety of himself, everything he could give, into him. 

Simon was buzzing off of the thought of it. For a second he had to seriously stop himself from getting up and grabbing him again. 

They’d kissed the entire day away, so that time had stopped having any meaning, and when the light came for dinner it was impossible to believe it hadn’t been seconds or that full days hadn’t gone by, that the day was still moving at its regular pace even as it left them behind. Simon had wanted to skip it, dinner. Baz had laughed at that- eyes all big and just slightly blue. He had really nice eyes. Said Simon must have had a **Carbon copy** spell put on him, and he’d wound up with the wrong one. Really, Simon was just afraid, of what would happen if they unstuck themselves from each other. He didn’t like the idea of Baz out of his sight, just when he’d finally got him where he wanted him. He didn’t like the thought of Baz coming back up having decided again that he didn’t want anything to do with Simon. And even if those fears hadn’t been pressing down on his chest, now that he knew Baz wanted this as much as he did, how was he ever supposed to want to do anything else? 

But Baz had gotten them dinner, and they’d stopped and eaten, and when they were done and Simon was sick of only staring, Baz had held him at arm’s length. And that had been the end of it, sentencing them to sitting on Baz’s bed, not touching. When it had gotten darker, turning into full night, Baz had whispered “Go to bed, Snow”, and when Simon’s eyes had fallen to Baz’s pillow, to the place on his bed he’d curled himself into before, Baz had said, “your own bed” and Simon had tried not to be disappointed. 

He’d gone to bed missing him, more than you should have been able to miss someone you’d just seen, who you lived with, who you’d spent hours in the arms of for most of the day. But the Baz that had sneered at him and done whatever he could to leave a bruise wasn’t the Baz that had asked him to leave, so he’d just went to sleep and waited for tomorrow. 

So far Baz wasn’t giving him the silent treatment. He hadn’t woken him up with sweet nothings or anything as soft as that, but Simon wasn’t sure he would have known what to do with that version of Baz anyway. It was just the rest of it that scared him- the way that when he moved it looked like he was dragging something behind him. Or how he stood in the sunlight even though it always left him shaking, like he’d been slightly burned. And that was new too, and worrying. He thought he would have known if Baz had never been able to stand in front of a window for more than three minutes before. 

Baz was sitting on his bed now, not quite looking at Simon, but not quite looking at anything else either. His gaze was somewhere between Simon’s head and the corner of the wall. He looked paper thin. 

“Hey, Baz?” Simon said, determined to try again. Nevermind how disastrous it had been before. This was serious- no matter what Baz was trying to pretend. 

It took Baz a moment to answer, like he was hearing him from a distance. “What, Snow?” 

After a second, when he didn’t continue, he looked at Simon fully, and something in his eyes melted. It made it hard for Simon not to smile. It made it hard for him to keep talking at all, and not just wrap his arms around him. 

“Are you....” Simon frowned, at himself. “I mean. You’re not okay.” 

The look on Baz’s face disappeared, and he frowned, eyes narrowed. 

“I just want to know,” Simon raised his voice, panicked suddenly at the thought of Baz ignoring him, or taking it the wrong way. His tongue felt heavy and worthless in his mouth. He wished, not for the first time, that he was better with his words. “I want to know, what’s going on. Are you- are you sick? Because I-” 

“I’m not _sick_ , Snow, Aliester Crowley, sorry to disappoint you,” Baz cut him off. 

Simon’s frown deepened, and he lifted an eyebrow at Baz who obviously could not be stupid enough to have thought for a second that that was how he felt. Or, at least, a second past the night he’d kissed him. Baz broke eye contact. 

“Baz,” Simon said. 

He let out a little huff instead of answering. 

“Can we not be fighting?” He said. Baz raised his eyes to meet Simon’s again, and held them this time. “Because honestly? I’ve had enough of fighting with you for a lifetime.” 

Baz sighed. “We’re not fighting.” 

“Okay.” 

Baz looked upset, guarded. “I’m not sick, Snow. That’s all you need to know.” 

Simon eyed him, and his suspicions rose back up to the surface. 

“Is it about, uh...” Simon curled his lip back and opened his mouth as wide as it would go, the way vampires on the television always did. 

Baz snorted. Simon hadn’t ever thought Baz could snort before. 

“Was that really the best way for you to-” He cut himself off with another peel of laughter. 

Simon smiled, face warm. 

“Well?” He kept on. 

Baz sobered. He ran his tongue over his teeth, looking anxious and stuck. Finally, he just said, “Yes.” 

They stared at each other. 

Simon had known, of course, but he’d never really been 100% sure. He’d never had “concrete proof” and he’d definitely never had a confession. He tried to see if it changed anything, the certainty of it. But he couldn’t feel anything but his own need to continue the conversation. 

“How long?” Simon asked. 

“How long?” Baz echoed back, looking uncomfortable. It took Simon a second to realize why. 

“No, I mean, uh. How long, since you last.... fed?” 

Baz’s mouth twisted and he didn’t answer right away. He wasn’t looking at Simon anymore, but staring at the floor. 

“The last time,” He started, sounding a little shaken. “was three days ago. Technically.” He added, “I drank a bird.” 

“One bird?” Simon asked, perplexed. “And that’s enough?” 

Baz frowned. “ _No_ , Snow. It’s not enough. But I don’t exactly have many options.” 

“So one bird. In nine days?” 

“Five birds in nine days,” Baz corrected him. “I managed to call a few earlier in the week, but now it’s like nothing is alive out there.” 

Simon did his best to ignore the dark sinisterness of the statement. 

“You drank the bird The Mage sent,” Simon guessed, and let out a victorious sound when Baz nodded, still looking miserable. “I _knew_ you did something to that bird.” 

Baz just sighed. 

“So five birds,” Simon pressed him. “How much is that?” 

“Not much,” Baz said, through clenched teeth. He took in a breath. “I normally.” He stopped himself, then continued, hesitantly, like he was confessing all over again. “I normally grab a dozen or so rats from the catacombs. Every night, if I can.” 

“I knew you were hunting in the catacombs,” Simon told him after it was obvious Baz was done speaking, a little more proud of himself than he meant to sound. (To be fair, he hadn’t know _exactly_ what Baz was doing, but he did assume it had something to do with being a vampire. That just felt like common sense.) 

“Yes, well,” Baz bit off. “it’s better than the alternative.” 

“Yeah,” Simon said, seriously. “it is.” 

Silence fell on the room, heavy with implication. 

“Baz,” Simon broke the silence again, voice cautious. “how long can you go? Without hunting?” 

“I don’t know,” Baz answered, then added, “I’ve never tried.” 

The words sounded just a bit too ominous for Simon’s liking. 

“What does _that_ mean?” It came out sounding alarmed. Baz’s eyes darted up to look at him. 

“Well I wasn’t given a bloody _manual_ , Snow,” Baz shot at him. 

“Okay,” Simon said softly, like he was trying to calm a wild animal. “So you don’t know. You’ve managed this long, right? And this can’t go on for much longer, with everybody studying it, so we’ll be out soon, and then you can-” 

Baz was shaking his head. “We have no idea how long this can go on for.” 

“But it’s-” 

“We have no idea how long we’re stuck here,” Baz plowed through, voice rising, nearly cracking. “and there’s no more birds to spell to me.” 

Simon bit his lip, trying to push away the heavy feeling tightening around him. 

“Well,” He said, slowly. “what does that mean?” 

Baz just shook his head. 

“Baz.” 

Baz pushed his hands to his face, still shaking his head, like he’d lost control of it. 

“Baz,” Simon repeated, fear sharpening the name. 

“I don’t _know_ , Snow,” He let a hand slip away, no longer covering his eyes. “I don’t know.” His gaze swept across Simon’s face, and he flinched back, as if the terror there was an assault against him. “I’m not going to- I’m not going to bite you.” 

“I know.” 

“I’ve gone this long without biting a human,” Baz said. “I’m not starting now. I’m not starting with _you_.” 

Simon exhaled, calmed just slightly, though not enough. He wasn’t afraid, of Baz biting him- he wouldn’t do it. He was sure of that. But he was glad he didn’t have to imagine Baz biting anyone else, either. That was what he’d always pictured, when he’d been following him, trying to catch him in the act. Baz leering over someone’s neck with his teeth all out and pointy. It was nice to know, that he’d gotten that wrong at least. 

“So what does that mean?” Simon asked again. “You just... don’t eat? You just starve to death?” 

Baz let out a noise like a groan. “ _I don’t know_.” 

“No.” 

“‘No’ what, Snow?” Baz said. 

“No, that’s not happening.” 

“You don’t have the ability to decide whether I live or die, actually,” Baz told him. 

“No,” Simon persisted. “I’m going to figure something out. _We’re_ going to figure something out.” 

“All those years,” Baz said. “doing whatever you could to prove I was a vampire and now you’re going to help me find blood to drink?” 

“Of course,” Simon said, simply. And it truly was simple. This was different. And maybe, if he’d known before, that he wasn’t draining people, that he was just... Baz, he wouldn’t have wasted so much time trying to catch him. 

Well, no, he probably still would have. But that didn’t really matter anymore. 

The light for lunch appeared, and Baz pushed a hand through his hair, as if trying to compose himself, and dragged his body towards the door. 

“I can go,” Simon volunteered. 

Baz followed his gaze, moving from the hollow of his cheek to his stiff, clumsy legs. 

“No, I can do it.” 

“Baz-” Simon started again. 

“Please, Simon. Don’t start acting like I’m on my deathbed.” He wrinkled his nose. “Besides, I’d like a break to smell something other than someone I could drink.” 

“Is that why you kicked me out?” Simon asked. “Last night? I smell like blood?” 

Baz made a face, half amused. “Were you worried, Snow?” 

Simon crossed his arms, and sat himself down, though not happily. Baz’s eyes lingered on his face, like he wanted to say something, or just stay there, looking at him, but in the end he turned away and walked out the door. 

Simon put his head down, face leaned against the palms of his hands. His chest hurt, like it was cracking. Because now it was impossible not to think about it- Baz, starving. Baz, dying, right in front of him. Baz, losing even more of himself to that dusty, tired dullness eating away at him. 

What was he supposed to do? 

But you couldn’t get to this place, fall into this place where you’re finally happy, with someone you finally have in the right way, and then lose it. It didn’t work that way. It _couldn’t_ work that way. 

What was the point, of any of this, if Baz was going to waste away in their bedroom? 

He stood up, knuckles white against the bedpost, heart hammering. 

He thought he might have been crying, just a little, just enough to blur the edges of the window. 

There must have been a spell. Somewhere, known by someone, a spell for this exact situation. But what was the point of magick so far away that it couldn’t do a thing to help them? He wracked his brain anyway, for every spell he’d gotten to work or hadn’t, anything he could plead with to be correct. 

In the end, there was nothing there, nothing he’d learned in seven years that could save them. 

His magick was prickling at him, overflowing past the cavity of his chest, rushing over his skin, bringing even more tears to his eyes. He closed them, shuddered his way through a thin, shaking breath, and said the only thing that he could. 

“ ** _Please._** ” 

The word came out drenched in magick, so heavy it made him dizzy. 

It was a word to add extra power to a spell, to add a compulsion to the magick already being cast. Alone, it only tugged at nothingness. 

Except, it didn’t exactly feel like that was what was happening. 

He felt something hooked to him, like he’d caught it on the edge of a fishing line, with the other end wrapped around his ribs. The tugging had weight to it, turning into a jerking, desperate motion as the weight increased, and Simon doubled over. 

There was a sound, like nails on a chalkboard, but a million times worse, echoing inside of the room, scratching and whining against stone walls. He heard a noise like something pulling itself closer to the bedroom. 

He was seeing stars, even against the backdrop of his eyelids. It felt someone was trying to rip part of him outside of his body, and he wasn’t sure he was fighting it well enough. Finally, when he was sure he couldn’t take it any more- when he was trying and failing to think of every possible way he could cut the tie, when he was considering meeting the spell half way, even if that meant crashing out of the window- it stopped. 

The line was still there, still tied to his aching body, but the pulling had ceased. He forced himself to pick up his head, open his eyes. 

The world was so covered in splotches of red and white that he couldn’t make out what it was at first, and then even as they faded, he still couldn’t quite grasp it. 

The creature was sitting across from him, mangy hair dreaded with translucent green reeds and leaking foul smelling water. The sides of its neck, one side of which was pressed against the rug, were flaring, gills gasping. 

The merwolf had left a trail of slimy water, as well as deep gashes in the wood and even stone, past the window sill to where it lay, staring at Simon with all the wild rage in the world, but frozen as if it had been tied down, delivered to him. Simon stared back at it, unsure, now, what else to do. 

The magick shook, and Simon shook with it, and he knew, without having to wonder, that it was fading. And when it did, there was going to be nothing between him and an openly hostile merwolf, pulled out of the lake against his will. 

Simon put his hands under the soaking wet fur and pushed. The merwolf was heavier than he’d hoped, but he kept on, until he managed to get it into the bathroom. When he closed the door, he heard a low growl. 

He stuck his desk chair under the door knob, and changed his now soggy shirt. 

Baz opened the door only a minute or two after Simon had changed and perched himself on the bed. He wrinkled his nose at the doorway, paused there with the plates in his hands more or less forgotten. 

“So.” Simon stood up, and took the plates away from Baz. They looked at each other. “Hypothetically,” He started, slowly. 

Baz raised an eyebrow at him, and Simon saw his eyes move to the wet rug, start moving towards the window. 

“Hypothetically,” He said again. “could you drink a merwolf?” 

Baz’s mouth turned into a half disgusted-half suspicious expression. 

“Technically. They’re not pleasant, but they’re not poisonous.” He narrowed his eyes at Simon. “Why?” 

Simon looked towards the bathroom door, with the chair forcing it closed. “You might want to... Go to the bathroom.” 

“Snow.” 

Baz was frowning at him, something complicated happening behind his eyes. He broke away from Simon and opened the bathroom door. 

Baz stared at the still mostly frozen merwolf dirtying their floor. The top half of it was snapping, angrily thrashing, while the rest of its body held it down. Baz looked back over at Simon, expression still too hard to decipher. 

Simon shrugged his arms in a gesture that meant something more or less like “I don’t know what to tell you, but bon apetit I guess”, and Baz took in a deep breath like he wasn’t sure any of this was actually happening. Suddenly, the merwolf threw itself off the ground and towards Baz. 

The bathroom door slammed shut as Baz shot towards it, far faster than Simon would have thought he’d be capable of, as worn as his body seemed. 

There was a guttural whine, and a thump against the floor that made the plates jump from where they sat on the desks. The door shook a few times, like something was kicking at it, and then everything was still. Simon heard the running water of the shower. 

Simon ducked his head out the window. There was a mud path kicked up all the way from the lake. If he angled his head just right he could see the marks the merwolf had made against the wall. 

The room smelled. And it was still wet. But he couldn’t make himself care, or think of any spells he could try. Right now all he was, more than surprised even by the spell that should not have been a spell, was relieved. 

When Baz came out the shower, hair wet and wearing a new, clean shirt, Simon climbed into his bed and waited for him. 

He looked better already. Still tired, still a little too gaunt, a little less graceful when he walked, but it didn’t matter. He looked like himself. And alive. Most importantly, he looked alive. 

Baz got onto the bed and reached out an arm towards Simon, who wrapped it around himself. His face was tucked securely into Baz’s neck, and he was taking in the fact that Baz was warmer, from the hot water or from the blood, and that he was solid. 

“Is there a dead merwolf in our bathroom now?” Simon asked. 

“Well you’re the one who put a live one in there,” Baz pointed out, and then said, “No.” 

“Is there a spell for that?” Simon asked, pulling away to look up at Baz. “Disposing of dead bodies?” 

“Crowley I don’t know. I had to get creative.” 

Simon laughed, then put his head back against Baz. 

“Is there a spell for _that_?” Baz asked. “Hog-tying a merwolf and pulling it through your window?” 

“Had to get creative,” Simon said, against Baz’s neck. 

“What did you say?” Baz asked, sounding curious. 

Simon sighed. “Just said please.” 

Baz was quiet as he digested that information. Simon was quiet because he’d just remembered that he was allowed to kiss Baz’s neck, and was doing so happily. 

“Simon Snow,” Baz breathed out, into the silence between them. “Do you realize that you just broke the laws of magick for me?” 

Simon worked his way up to Baz’s cheek, and grinned. 

“Yeah. You’re still not allowed to bite me, though.” 

Baz furrowed his eyebrows at him, annoyed or pretending to be. 

Simon just laughed, and leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth. Baz pressed one cool hand on his face, moving it until their lips were on top of each other. 

It didn’t matter anymore, in that moment, what would or would not happen in the future, only that they were together, and that they’d chosen to be. They weren't fighting, for once in their lives, and neither of them were dying, and what else could matter beyond that? 

Tomorrow would come eventually, softly or not. A threat or a promise, or both. But it was hard to think, even that far ahead, when you could close your eyes and feel someone's heart beating against your own. 

Alive. 

They were alive. 


	9. Chapter 9

Mornings felt different when you woke up with your arms around T. Basilton Grimm-Pitch. Simon’s eyes were barely open, trying to stay in the feeling of it, the security of Baz’s neck against his chin, the feeling of his chest, rising and falling. 

Baz’s usually cold body was warm everywhere they overlapped, so that his legs and chest were nearly hot. 

His hair was swept over his face, and Simon propped himself up, using one hand to carefully brush it behind his ear. It struck him how long he’d wanted something like this. Not with any specifics, or the right words for it- or any words for it- but the simple, careless ability to touch Baz, in any gentle way. To have his fingers in Baz’s hair. To be allowed to be near him without either of their walls going up, weapons drawn. 

Baz’s eyes opened, finding Simon immediately, and he smiled with a sleepy, uncomplicated happiness. 

Simon’s heart felt like it could burst. 

It felt strange, the timing of it, the new yet certain happiness striking when he felt like he should have be going insane, or going off. But at the same time, it felt as if it could have only happened this way, with the universe taking them both by the shoulders. And even if that wasn’t true, and they would have somehow found their way to each other some other way, he didn’t care that maybe he was supposed to be less happy. There wasn’t a thing he would trade, for this moment, for the promise that there would be another like it. 

Baz sat up next to Simon, head leaned against the wall, the smile still lingering on his lips. 

“How are you doing?” Simon asked. 

“Better,” Baz answered easily, then stifled a yawn. “Definitely better.” 

“Good.” 

The world outside their windows was quiet except for the light sound of the breeze, and the even quieter sound of the water faintly lapping from the lake. Simon strained his ears for bird song, but there was nothing to hear. In the back of his head he thought of Baz’s words, about there being nothing out there, in the air at least. Nothing they could see, or capture. 

He pulled himself gently away from the thought, but Baz seemed to be thinking the same way he was. 

“What do you think it’s like out there?” 

Simon frowned. “No idea. Honestly, I’ve been trying not to think about it.” 

“Bunce would have told you if anything changed,” Baz said. 

“I guess,” Simon answered, noncommittally. 

She would have tried, he was sure, if she knew anything pressing or overly worrying. But he didn’t like the thought of her risking herself to get to him. He was still trying not to think about how she’d gotten the note in, and trying not to think about her getting caught or worse sneaking over another one. 

“They’ll figure something out eventually,” Baz said now. A shadow passed across his face as a new thought occurred to him. “I hope father’s forcing everyone inside. Mordelia’s probably already snuck out the back door days ago if they aren’t watching close enough.” 

“Mordelia?” Simon asked. 

“Sister. Half-sister.” 

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Simon said. It was hard to picture Baz as a brother. As anything outside of who he was at Watford, or who he was in this bed. 

“I have three,” Baz told him, in a voice meant for flirting (Baz kept breaking it out at the least likely times and catching Simon completely, stupidly off guard), but a troubling look in his eyes. “and a baby brother.” 

“Are you worried?” Simon asked him. 

Baz let out a nearly inaudible sigh. “Yes.” 

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Simon said, because someone had to. 

“I hope so.” 

Simon wrapped an arm around Baz, who leaned in to let him. He sighed into Simon’s curls. 

Somewhere, far below this feeling of warmth and contentment, Simon was scared. The kind of scared that happened when you were left without orders, when you thought you might be failing the most important job in the world. The kind of scared that happened when you just learned about more people the person you care about cares about, just in time to learn that they might be in danger too. The kind of scared that was carefully edging itself around the bruise of knowing that any problem solved yesterday would need to be solved again, and sooner than he wanted to think about it. 

He didn’t want to think about anything at all. 

He pressed warm lips into Baz’s cold skin, and felt him shudder underneath his mouth, felt him release his tensed muscles. Baz was looking at him like nothing could be wrong, here, with them, because of them. And it was easier than it should have been to believe him. 

Baz slipped away from him what felt like hours later, claiming morning breath. It was a physical relief to see him move without limping, crushed under weight. Simon watched him in the bathroom doorway, brushing his teeth, and running a hand over his face. The easiness, the simple state of being alive. 

Simon pushed himself off the bed as Baz moved on to some overly complicated ritual involving at least 6 bottles and hand motions against his cheekbones that looked a lot like what Normals assumed spellwork was like, making his way over to his pile of clothing. For a moment he considered trying to spell something clean again, then decided against it, and just grabbed the least spotty looking pair of trousers he could find. 

Baz came back out, and Simon felt his eyes on his currently uncovered back. He turned, feeling himself go pink. 

He was looking at him in a new way, and there was a pinch of joy at knowing that Simon was only just learning every way he could look at him, every expression he could tease from him. 

“Please don’t put that shirt back on,” Baz said, as Simon reached towards the shirt closest to him. It happened to be the one from the night before, dry now but still reeking of lake water. 

Simon threw it aside, and reached for a different one, and Baz made a little noise of disapproval before he could wrap his hand around it. 

“You get jam on practically every shirt you wear,” Baz told him, lip quirked. “Come on, Snow. You can borrow one of mine.” 

Simon crossed his arms over his bare chest, slightly embarrassed at the thought of it. He took a step closer to him. “Alright.” 

Baz handed him a shirt far softer than any Simon had ever worn, a gray color lighter than Baz’s eyes. It fit surprisingly well. 

Baz was looking at him again, in that ‘taking it all in’ kind of way, and Simon couldn’t resist reaching out to him, but Baz held him back a little, eyes still tracing the length of him. 

“Are you admiring your own shirt?” Simon asked. 

“It’s a nice shirt, Snow.” 

Simon tried to move closer again, and Baz pushed back again, this time a mischievous smile on his lips like he was doing it just be a prat. Simon huffed. 

Finally, Baz let him go, and he stumbled forward, face nearly touching Baz’s already. He could feel him smiling against his mouth. 

Baz moved away from Simon far too quickly after finally bringing his lips to him, and Simon huffed before noticing why. 

There was a bird, a sparrow, Simon thought, standing on Baz’s desk. He reached out a hand and grabbed it, stomach doing a complicated flip when he spotted the paper it was holding. 

He handed the bird to Baz without looking away from the folded note. He could see Baz in his peripheral vision turn away awkwardly, bird raised just under his mouth. 

He had asked Baz, during dinner the day before, why he always faced the wall when he ate, but Baz had just grinned cheekily, and told him he was allowed his secrets. He was, after all, a bit of a prat. Though that was just another thing that made Simon want to kiss him. 

“Well?” Baz asked from beside him. 

Simon shook his head. 

Baz shifted, moving his hand to the window (to get rid of the bird, Simon thought), then leaned forward. “Aren’t you going to open that, Snow?” 

“I can’t.” 

“Is it magicked shut?” 

Simon ran a hand through his hair, letting out an exasperated breath. “I just. I just can’t.” 

Baz’s shoulder pressed into Simon’s, a comforting weight. 

“Afraid it’s not over yet?” He asked, voice soft, then after a stretching, uncertain silence, added, “Or afraid it is?” 

Simon let his eyes fall closed. “Dunno.” He opened them again after a moment. “Is it daft if I’m afraid of both? I mean, I don’t want anyone getting sick. Obviously.” He added, quickly. 

“It’s not,” Baz said. 

He looked worried too. His mouth was pinched, eyes doing their best to avoid looking at the note or at the boy holding it. 

“Simon.” 

He bumped his shoulder against Baz’s as a wordless response, and the other boy leaned into him, just slightly, but kept his silence. 

“If this goes on much longer,” He said, finally, words working themselves out of his mouth slowly and with resistance. “If that’s what he’s writing to tell you.” 

“What?” Simon asked, because Baz didn’t seem willing to say a single word more. 

Suddenly Baz looked up, face serious and determined. “I can’t be trusted, if we’re stuck here. If this isn’t over soon, I need you to promise that you’re going to stop me.” 

“Stop you,” Simon echoed, like the words had no meaning. 

“Simon,” Baz said again, voice soft but unyielding. “I need you to- I need you to kill me. If it gets to that.” 

Simon froze, feeling like he’d had a wall thrown directly into him. He opened his mouth silently, lips mouthing before he could get the words out. 

“It won’t!” 

Baz let out a sad exhale. “You don’t know that.” 

“I do!” He tried to suck in a breath, but it was like he couldn’t get any air. He shook his head. “I’ll- I’ll call something again.” 

“You didn’t even use a spell,” Baz said. “It shouldn’t have worked. It might not ever work again.” 

“It _will_.” 

“If it doesn’t,” Baz said. “then it’s just you, and me, in a room. It’s just _you_.” 

“You wouldn’t,” Simon told him. 

Baz’s expression was pained. “I might. If I was mad with it.” 

“You wouldn’t.” 

“Not on purpose. Not if I’m still me. But, Simon,” Baz’s eyes were pleading. “Simon I can’t promise you anything.” 

“Well I can’t either.” 

“You _have to_.” 

“How do we even know,” Simon said. “if I could? Stop you? You’re right, my magick isn’t reliable. Maybe I can’t.” 

“You can,” Baz said, like it was a fact. “Anyway,” He added. “you have that bloody sword.” 

“I couldn’t,” Simon said, half to himself. 

“I’ve spent most of my life knowing you were going to kill me, it’s not like this is really new,” Baz said, holding his mouth like it was a joke, but not quite managing to make it sound that way. Or adjust the rest of his features to look less sad, less tortured. “I thought I could rely on that at least.” 

“It’s not-” Simon said, eyes narrowing at the idea of the past and their assumptions, like it was an unthinkable betrayal. “Baz, it isn’t- it’s _different_ , I couldn’t- I won’t-” 

“I know,” Baz told him, voice softer, expression bleak. “that it’s different. I know.” And he looked like he was blaming himself. Like he truly had been relying on it, and had cut his safety net himself. 

Simon wondered, briefly, how much that had to do with the coldness and the reappearances of cruelty. How much of it was defense. 

“Just promise me,” Baz’s voice was still quiet, but there was a pleading sort of tone to it that made it feel like it filled the room. “If it comes to that. Only if.” 

Simon shook his head again. Unhappily knowing that he’d be checking his eyes, the shadows of his face, forever now. Whether he wanted to or not. Whatever it would lead to, if he saw something he didn’t want to see. 

Simon ran a hand through his hair, pushing at his forehead like he could physically push his thoughts down. 

Baz exhaled, leaned back limply against the wall, giving up at least for the moment. 

“Okay, then,” He said. His voice still sounded slightly pained, but he was doing what he could to mask it. “what if it’s not that? What if he’s telling you it’s contained, and everything is over?” 

Simon was still trying to catch his breath and get his heart back into his chest. He blinked at Baz, not entirely comprehending. “Then that’s good, isn’t it?” 

“I mean,” Baz said. “what does that mean, for... this?” 

“Oh.” 

It didn’t feel like there was an ‘after’. It didn’t feel like he deserved one, like he’d done his part and earned it. And the idea of life, back in order, when things settled, he could only picture it the way it had always been. Him, and Penny, him trying and failing to be a good boyfriend to Agatha, who was trying and failing to keep trying to stick with him anyway. And Baz... Shooting spells at him? At the end of a dark corridor Simon was following him down? 

He couldn’t put the two things together, the now and the possibility of a future. But he didn’t like the idea, of Baz like that, even if it was the way things had always been. There was a sick feeling running through him, of what came after, the ending of the story he’d always assumed was his and Baz’s. 

It didn’t feel like there was a place, for a new version, a new ending. It didn’t feel, suddenly, like there was a place for anything but what was already there. No room to grow. No room to think outside of the Wars. No room to breathe. 

Baz was looking at him with an expression of feigned casualness, like the question didn’t really mean anything to him. There was a tightness to his jaw, though, and a worried look in his eyes, and it made Simon want to touch him, hold him to his chest, let them both forget the whole thing. 

How long would it take, for that want to go away? Would it ever? Even if things went back to ‘normal’? 

“I have no idea what’s going to happen,” Simon said, slowly. “I have absolutely no idea what this note is going to say. If it’s going to be an end or a cure or a warning or just The Mage giving me new training ideas. And I can’t say I know how I’m going to feel either way. Or how I’ll feel about it, when the virus is done with and we can all go back to our lives. But right now. Honestly? I’m really happy, Baz. 

“And. Well. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, about me just being lonely, or being bored because there’s nothing else to do,” Simon said. 

He thought he saw a look of panic dart across Baz’s face, even as he squared his jaw. 

“And?” 

Simon held his gaze, a slow smile spreading from the corner of his mouth. “I’m not just lonely, Baz. Or bored. Or anything else. I... I think I’ve wanted this for a while. I think I might have wanted _you_ , for a while. And I really don’t want this-” He nudged Baz’s leg with his own. “us. To end.” 

Something loosened in Baz and he smiled. 

“You ‘think’ you’ve wanted it?” He asked. 

“I don’t always notice the important things” Simon admitted, still smiling. “And I’ve had to worry about the Humdrum for the past 7 seven years, so I’ve had other things on my mind. More _dangerous_ things.” 

Baz made a face. “Well that’s a matter of opinion, Snow.” 

Simon laughed. 

He looked down at the note again, then back up at Baz, worry grounding him, turning his thoughts serious. “I can’t promise you anything, Baz, about what’s going to happen. I don’t know what things are going to be like, or how either of us are going to feel, or how hard any of this is going to be when it’s not just us. But I don’t want things to go back how they were. And I’m going to keep fighting for this- whatever _this_ is- as long as you’ll let me.” 

Baz turned his face away just slow enough for Simon to spot his pleased expression. 

“Alright, alright, you don’t need to propose, Snow.” 

Simon’s face turned hot. 

Silence dragged out, and Baz shifted, like he was trying to keep quiet. 

After a few seconds, Baz asked, in a new voice, like he couldn’t help himself. “And if it does- go back to how it was? If it’s The Mage, against our side?” 

Simon struggled. “I’m. I’m never going to want to.” 

Baz let out a quiet breath. “I know. I’m not either.” 

He reached out and took Baz’s hand, and Baz squeezed it. His eyes fell back on the note, and after a few moments he could feel Baz looking too. Both of them frozen, feeling the weight of whatever was laying ahead of them. 

“Well,” Baz said. “Go on then, Snow. Tell us the good news.” 

Simon took a breath, and opened the paper. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thank you for reading! It feels really weird for this fic to be over, and I'm sure I drove you a little nuts with this ending (among other things), but I hope you liked it, and I want to thank you for hanging on and going on this journey with me 💖


End file.
